Workers Vanguard 1984 Vol 15 #345-369

WORKERS VANGUARD

Volume No. 15

6 January to 21 December 1984
(Issues Nos. 345-369)

Published by: Spartacist Publishing Co.
Box 1 377 GPO, New York, NY 1 01 1 6

Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2016 with funding from
Prometheus Research Library

https://archive.org/details/workersvanguard15spar

WORKERS VANGUARD .

No. 345 s^5*»» 6 January 1984

U.S. Hands Off the World!

NATO

The destructive frenzy of dying capitalism: 16-inch guns of battleship New Jersey bombard Syrian forces in Lebanon; Pershing 2 missiles deployed In West
Germany are six to eight minutes flying time from major Soviet cities.

I

■

JANUARY 3 — Millions around the
world are wondering whether there will
be a New Year's. 1985. On December 30
a high official in West Germany's
foreign ministry declared. “The first
American battery of nine Pershing 2
rockets is ready for action in West
Germany." For action? So much for the
claim that the U.S. nuclear arsenal is for
"deterrence." The new NATO missiles
in West Europe, the Marines in Leba-
non, the rape of the tiny black West
Indian island of Grenada, these are not
the whims of one man. Ronald Reagan,
but the destructive fren/y of a dying
capitalist world order.

Reagan came to office promising to
restore the “American century" of the
1950s. He was going to achieve military
“superiority" over the Soviet Union and
wipe out the “Vietnam syndrome" in
America. But he can't. There will be no
return to the world before the Vietnam
War either in the minds of the American
people or in the real balance of military
and economic forces. However many
billions are showered on the Pentagon,
there will be no return to the time of the
1962 Cuba missile crisis when the U.S.
had over 2.000 strategic nuclear weap-
ons. the Soviet Union only about 70.
Today, as Soviet chief of staff marshal

Nikolai Ogarkov warned, "retaliation
will be certain in all cases." And he can
deliver. The U.S. imperialists can no
longer practice effective nuclear black-
mail. They cannot police the world, they
cannot dominate it. The only thing they
can do is blow it up.

And they’re now acting just crazy
enough to do it. like H itler in his bunker
(but Hitler by then was militarily
toothless). From the Pentagon to the
White House the American rulers have
gone absolutely gaga over the “interna-
tional terrorist threat." They’re mutter-
ing about the "truck-bomb gap” with
Syria and Iran. First Reagan surrounds
the White House with dump trucks
Tilled with sand, then concrete barriers.
One half expects he’ll bring in tanks
next, as Washington comes to look
more and more like some damn banana
republic. Of course, there is no terrorist
threat to the U.S. rulers. The real
terrorists of the world— from Hiroshi-
ma to Vietnam to Central America— are
the men in the White House and
Pentagon.

World Policemen Who Can’t
Shoot Straight

The would-be policemen of the Near
East arc behaving more like the Key-

stone Cops. On October 23 one man in a
Mercedes truck filled with explosives
drove right into the central lobby of the
Marine headquarters at Beirut airport
and blew it up. killing 241 U.S.
servicemen. Not only can’t the U.S.
forces in Lebanon protect themselves,
they can’t even carry out a simple
bombing raid The "retaliatory" air raid
against Syria in early December was
itself a mini-disaster Of the 28 relatively
slow-flying planes sent on the mission,
two were shot down by Soviet-supplied
antiaircraft missiles. One pilot was
killed and his navigator (who is black)
was captured by the Syrians and held as
a prisoner of war. the first since
Vietnam Syrian strongman Assad was
smart enough to release him to black
Democratic politico Jesse Jackson just
to rub Reagan’s face in it.

Even the Pentagon brass want out of
the bloody mess in Lebanon. The
official Long commission report on the
October 23 bombing actually criticizes
Reagan's policies for jeopardizing the
Marines— an unheard-of thing. Reagan
is in trouble over Lebanon. Right after
the Marine headquarters bombing we
raised the call "U.S. Marines Out of
Lebanon. Now. Alive!" seeking to
intersect the popular feeling that it was

Reagan’s senseless criminal policies
which killed those 241 young men.
Especially after the Pentagon report, the
pressure is building in this country to
pull out of Lebanon. Democratic front-
runner Walter Mondale has just flip-
flopped and is calling for a phased
withdrawal So if Reagan cannot win
the elections as the Teddy Roosevelt of
Grenada, he may try an Adolf Hitler
ploy and charge the Democrats with a
“stab in the back” over the Near East.

If U.S. imperialism is caught in a
bloody quagmire in Lebanon, it’s
getting creamed in Central America too.
When the Reagan gang took office, they
targeted El Salvador as the place to wipe
out the "Vietnam syndrome." Here was
going to be a Vietnam in reverse, and on
the cheap. Although the Soviet Union
and Cuba gave little if any military aid
to the leftist guerrillas, the Reaganites
declared El Salvador the forward point
of Soviet "expansionism." the front line
of Cold War II. But while Washington’s
puppet army and rightist death squads
kill tens of thousands of defenseless
people, the leftist guerrillas are w inning
the civil war. Repeatedly now. entire
army companies have deserted en
masse. Last w eek the guerrillas captured
continued on page 10

Marxism and
Bloodthirstiness ... 4

Moonies Forced to
Retract Deadly Libel . . .12

Socialist Action's Debut

Ex-SWPers Goon for S.F. Labor Fakers

The San Francisco Bay Area was the
scene of some of the most militant strike
action against the Greyhound bosses
and their attempt to bust the Amalga-
mated Transit Union (ATU). This
explosive potential was shown in a
December 3 demonstration when 1,500-
2,000 militant workers, after listening to
over an hour of windy bureaucrats’
speeches, took off to the Greyhound
terminal to try and shut it down. The
fighting mood of the workers here, as in
Philadelphia and Boston, showed that a
national transport strike to bring Grey-
hound to its knees was possible. Grey-
hound bosses clearly recognized this —
the company has announced the firing
of at least 100 militant strikers, 34 of
them in the Bay Area alone.

While AFL-CIO bureaucrats
mouthed empty talk of "solidarity, "just
as in the PA TCO strike they stabbed the
isolated Greyhound strikers in the back
by refusing to mobilize their ranks and
opposing any real solidarity action. In
the Bay Area these sellouts got a little
help from some ex-members of the
Socialist Workers Party (SWP) who
recently formed “Socialist Action" and
are advertising themselves as the best
friends of Polish Solidarnosc, the only
“union" Ronald Reagan loves. At the
maiden forum to introduce Socialist
Action, held in San Francisco on
December 16, these laborite reformists
cynically bragged about setting up a
"workers defense guard" (really a goon
squad) to help the union misleaders
protect Greyhound against "crazies" —
the militants who wanted to stop the
scab buses from rolling!

The Greyhound strike was a real test
for the left. The Spartacist League and
class-struggle unionists from long-
shore/warehouse and telephone were
present at the December 3 SF rally,
calling for “Trucking, Rail, Transit,
AFSCME Workers — All Out to Stop
Union Busting!" Our slogans and chants
were picked up by the strikers: we saw
"Picket Lines Mean Don’t Cross!" and
"No More PATCOs!" hand-scrawled
on the back of official ATU signs; and as

the crowd was marching down Market
Street they were enthusiastically chant-
ing “On strike — Shut it down!" and "No
scab buses!" At Seventh Street near
Market the demonstrators surged to-
ward the Greyhound terminal. At this
point labor bureaucrats rushed to the
front of the building with the cops.
Walter Johnson of the Retail Clerks,
perennial leader of every phony “soli-
darity" coalition, and ILWU chief
Jimmy Herman pleaded with the crowd
to disperse. But demonstrators contin-
ued to block Seventh Street for another
two hours. No buses moved. The union
misleaders were terrified.

Immediately a whisper campaign was
begun by the bureaucrats saying that
“the Sparts” were causing all the
trouble, we were the "rabble-rousers."
In reality, the most militant layer of Bay
Area labor came out to shut down
Greyhound, and our class-struggle
slogans were eagerly taken up by the
crowd in this spontaneous mass action.
Next time, the bureaucrats vowed to be
"prepared." At a December 5 strike
support meeting, Seymour Kramer, an
official in the UTU, called for more
"monitors” to police the pickets at the
upcoming rally. And on December 10
when militant workers again defied the
sellout bureaucrats and set up picket
lines at terminal entrances to stop the
buses, a line of bureaucrats, painters
union heavies, and "socialist” goons
appeared. When the police commander
told the picket captain to disperse the
crowd, he dutifully announced "the
rally’s over." And standing right next to
him telling everyone to go home was one
Jeff Mackler, co-national chairman of
Socialist Action and a former teachers
union official.

At its December 16 public debut.
Mackler spoke along with Socialist
Action's Maximum Leader Nat Wein-
stein (the Solidarnosc-lover who made
even the SWP puke). Mackler noted
that at the Greyhound rally their
strategy was "to have a little march, a
nice peaceful march” while assailing
“ultralefts” — that is, the militants (of

TROTSKY

The Trotskyists Remained
Faithful to October

Leopold Trepper was the heroic Soviet
spy who created the " Red Orchestra" that
smuggled invaluable intelligence out of
occupied Europe and Nazi Germany during
World War II. In his memoirs Trepper
recalled the heroism of the Trotskyists
during the lime of Stalin's great purges in
the 1 930s. We reprint below an excerpt from
his account of that period.

LENIN

The glow of October was being
extinguished in the shadows of under-
ground chambers. The revolution had
degenerated into a system of terror and
horror; the ideals of socialism were
ridiculed in the name of a fossilized
dogma which the executioners still had
the effrontery to call Marxism.

And yet we went along, sick at heart,
but passive, caught up in machinery we
had set in motion with our own hands,
Mere cogs in the apparatus, terrorized
to the point of madness, we became the
instruments of our own subjugation. All
those who did not rise up against the
Stalinist machine are responsible, col-
lectively responsible I am no exception
to this verdict.

But who did protest at that time'7 Who
rose up to voice his outrage?

The Trotskyitcs can lay claim to this
'■•'nor. Following the example of their
leader, who was rewarded for his

obstinacy with the end of an ice-axe,
they fought Stalinism to the death, and
they were the only ones who did. By the
time of the great purges, they could only
shout their rebellion in the freezing
wastelands where they had been
dragged in order to be exterminated In
the camps, their conduct was admirable.
But their voices were lost in the tundra.

Today, the Trotskyitcs have a right to
accuse those who once howled along
with the wolves. Let them not forget,
however, that they had the enormous
advantage over us of having a coherent
political system capable of replacing
Stalinism. They had something to cling
to in the midst of their profound distress
at seeing the revolution betrayed. They
did not “confess," for they knew that
their confession would serve neither the
party nor socialism.

— Leopold Trepper,

The Great Game (1977)

2

whom there were hundreds) who want-
ed to stop the scab buses — for supposed-
ly seeking a bash with the cops.
Reflecting the bureaucrats’ panic,
Mackler went on:

“We had to organize a workers defense
guard so the next week the crazies
wouldn't run the demonstration We
had a spectacle of a tiny sect of 20
people leading the chants to workers of
2,000 We needed a little proletarian
discipline."

At this point another pscudo-
Trotskyist reformist. Steve Zeltzer.
pointed a finger at the two Spartacist
supporters in the audience. Mackler
agreed — “You’re pointing to theculprits

black question — which is really the
American question — like the plague
Which is a revealing omission in a
country where blacks are in the fore-
front of labor militancy and the struggle
against fascism — things which I don’t
think you want to have much todo with,
except to stop. And I think the real
problem that you face in this country is
that the role you want, which is laborite
social democracy, isalready taken up by
Michael Harrington. That is your real
problem You have very little relation-
ship to Trotskyism and anybody in this
room who is interested in Trotskyism
should look to the Spartacist League
which does represent that continuity,
and certainly not to you, who are if
anything a right-wing split from the
Socialist Workers Party.”

San Francisco,
3 December 1983:
Mass militant efforts
to shut down
bus terminals
terrified Bay Area
labor bureaucrats.

right there" — and launched into a frenzy
of “outside agitator" baiting worthy of
the worst Meanyite piecard: "No one in
the socialist movement has the right to
go to a striking group of 2.000 workers
and take over that picket line, lead the
slogans, organize the chants and march
the workers around." Socialist Action,
on the other hand, claims the right to
organize an SWP-stylc "peaceful. legal”
parade for the bureaucrats so that the
angry workers can blow off steam w hile
lecturing them that “we couldn’t close
down the thing for the whole day.” In
fact it was perfectly obvious that the
workers could have and would have
shut it down except that the bureaucrats
and their waterboys acted as Grey-
hound’s first line of defense.

Spartacist spokesman Diana Cole-
man took the floor to respond:

"I want to talk about the Greyhound
strike a little bit. I think that you see
[SWP national chairman) Barnes'
somewhat eccentric positions as a
barrier to ending what you call the
SWP’s ’self-imposed isolation’ which I
think means that you want to be more
effective at becoming the waterboys for
the trade-union bureaucracy in this
country.

“And yes. I did see what happened at
Greyhound as a test of your organiza-
tion when I saw, this last Saturday, Jeff
Mackler standing up there shoulder-to-
shoulder not only with trade-union
bureaucrats but the San Francisco
police department defending the Grey-
hound bus station lest angry workers
should get out ol hand and do some-
thing ‘outrageous’ like shut down
Greyhound or stop the buses Yes. I
thought that really did show what side
you were on.

"And I am Mattered by these somewhat
oblique references, if people think that
the Spartacist League mobilized every
kind of militant action that has hap-
pened around Greyhound But let me
assure you that there are in fact militant
workers in this area who do want to see
the buses stopped and Greyhound shut
down

"The other point which I would make
about your paper is that you avoid the

The Bay Area has the most vital
tradition of militant labor struggle in
this country outside of the miners. So
every couple of years or so the pro-
company, pro-Democratic Party union
hacks have a job for pseudo-socialist
finks and goons in order to keep the lid
on. During the 1981 PATCO strike,
Zeltzer played this role when he helped
the bureaucrats try to corral militant
workers who were surging into the
streets blocking traffic to the SF airport.
Mackler’s talk of a "workers defense
guard" against militant workers is of a
piece with the obscene act of the UAW
bureaucracy back in 1973 when they
broke a sit-down strike at Detroit’s
Mack Avenue plant by mobilizing a
1.000-man goon squad. Playing on
UAW tradition, they cynically tried to
pass this off as a "flying squad."

Grovelling before the bureaucrats,
the first issue of Socialist Action ( whose
masthead imitates the Solidarnosc logo
and which does not have a union bug)
assiduously refused to take a position on
the sellout contract which the ATU tops
shoved down the Greyhound strikers’
throats. This puts them to the right of
the A I U local president in San Francis-
co, who blasted the sellout. And they
rail against “ultraleft” workers just as
Greyhound management is rounding up
the militants for firing and maybe
worse! I hese small-time social demo-
crats look back to the big-time social-
traitors like Gustav Noskc who. in order
to head off red revolution in Germany in
1918-1919. was responsible for the
murder of Communist leaders Rosa
Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht
"Somebody has to be the bloodhound."
was Noske’s infamous remark. In less
than a month of existence as a public
tendency these little Noskcs of "Social-
ist Action" have made it perfectly clear
where they stand— with the bureau-
crats. the bosses, the cops and the com-
pany against the workers’ struggle ■

WORKERS VANGUARD

Over 1,000 Votes for Kartsen in TWU Elections

Militant Opposition
Forged in NYC Transit

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Class-struggle fighters won a signifi-
cant breakthrough in elections in New
York’s transit union (TWU Local 100).
Running as the only opponent to
incumbent president John Lawe. Ed
Kartsen of the Committee fora Fighting
TWU received over 1,000 votes (7.6
percent of the total). This impressive
showing came in a context in which
many TWUers (almost two-thirds of the
membership) showed their disgust for
the leadership’s policies by not voting at
all. In not only rejecting Lawe, but also
the vicious red-baiting of prominent ex-
oppositionist Arnold Cherry, the work-
ers who backed Committee candidates
Kartsen, Dave Brewer and Jim Smith
made a conscious choice for a hard
class-struggle program.

Kartsen’s vote total is a several-fold
increase from what he received in the
1981 elections. The Committee has
emerged as the recognized opposition in
the TWU with a hearing and following
among key militants. Kartsen did
particularly well in the transportation
section of the union, which has a high
percentage of black workers. The TWU
is a strategic union with enormous social
power — American capitalism can’t run
without New York’s subways — and
represents a key intersection of NYC’s
labor and blacks. With a class-struggle
leadership the TWU could spearhead
the city’s unions and minorities, with
potential national impact, in class
struggle against the bosses and bankers.
The advances made by the Committee
are vital and warmly welcomed.

The Committee won authority as the
only group in the union to organize
against race terror. When black transit
worker Willie Turks was beaten to death
by a racist lynch mob in Brooklyn, the
militants fought to mobilize union
forces in flatbed trucks to establish
safety and order against the race killers.
They helped organize and lead the only
union protest against the acquittal of the
murderers of Turks.

“Dissident" Local 100 bureaucrat
Arnold Cherry and his ally Mike Scott
(politically supported by the Commu-
nist Party) took their reformist politics
to their logical conclusion by giving
backhanded support to Lawe. In sharp-
ly exposing this maneuver, the Commit-

WORKERS

VANGUARD

Marxist Working-Class Biweekly ot
the Spartacist League ot the U.S.

EDITOR Jan Norden
PRODUCTION MANAGER Noah Wilner
CIRCULATION MANAGER Darlene Kamiura
EDITORIAL BOARD Jon Brule,

Charles Burroughs. George Foster,

Liz Gordon. James Robertson,

Reuben Samuels, Joseph Seymour.

Mar|orie Stamberg

(Closing editor tor No 345 Liz Gordon)
Workers Vanguard (USPS 098-770) published
biweekly, skipping an issue in August and
a week in December, by the Spariacist
Publishing Co . 41 Warren Street, New York,
NY 10007 Telephone 732-7862 (Editorial),
732-7861 (Business) Address all corre-
spondence to Box 1377, GPO, New York, NY
10116 Domestic subscriptions S5 00/24
issues Second-class postage paid at New
York, NY POSTMASTER Send address
changes to Workers Vanguard, Box 1377,
GPO. New York, NY 10116
Opinions expressed in signed articles or
letters do not necessarily express the editorial
viewpoint

No. 345 6 January 1984

tee showed Cherry’s slicker brand of
reformism to be no better than Lawe's
conservative business unionism. In
several instances confrontations be-
tween former Cherry supporters and the
Cherry gang were quite dramatic, with
unionists angrily waving Committee
leaflets in the faces of Cherry’s lieute-
nants. Both Cherry and Scott were
defeated for divisional offices.

The campaign leaflets for Kartsen,
Brewer and Smith stressed that the
attacks on the jobs and conditions of
transit workers are part of a general
capitalist offensive against the unions
and minorities that can only be fought
with a class-struggle program that
points toward the abolition of the

Photo
run In
TWU paper
shows
Local 100
presidential
candidate
Ed Kartsen
at 23 Nov.
1983 labor
rally for
Greyhound
strikers In
New York.

WHIRE

i^SUDARinl

in,

TWU Express

profit system and its replacement with a
workers government:

"The money is there to rebuild transit,
our schools and hospitals But it’s going
to the banks that have run this city into
the ground and to the bosses' war drive
that pours trillions into a fanatical
campaign to wage nuclear war against
the Soviet Union. We need TWU
leaders with an anti-capitalist program
who will mobilize black and white in
this city to smash the Reagan/ Koch
cuts. Tear out the token machines — for
free, safe, rapid transit for the people of
New York! Cancel the debt —
expropriate the banks! Jobs for all
through a shorter workweek with no cut
in pay!”

WV Photo

TWU militants at New York’s Pori Authority rally last
November 23 for Greyhound strikers, calling for national
transport strike against the union-busters.

We reprint below a leaflet issued by the
Committee fora Fighting TWU follow-
ing the elections:

The Fight Continues

The Local 100 elections are over and
the Lawe leadership has won another
two year term in office. But over one
thousand members voted for candidates
of the Committee for a Fighting TWU:
1 ,0 1 7 voted for Kartsen for president, 74
voted for Brewer for Exec. Board in Car
Maintenance, and 72 voted for Smith
for Exec. Board in United Motormen’s
Division. We acknowledge the election
proceedings were run fairly. The shat-
tered Cherry opposition ran nobody for
president and instead campaigned
against Kartsen who was Lawe's only
opponent in the presidential race. The
Cherry slate was defeated for every
office. The fact that a significant core of
the membership cast their votes for
candidates running on a program for
militant class struggle indicates the basis
for building a new, fighting leadership in
this union.

Our union continues to crumble and
in the next two years we must be
prepared to selectively answer the
increasingly sharper attacks by manage-
ment. Those TWU members who
supported the Committee fora Fighting
TWU in the elections are the most
conscious militants in the struggle to
defend the TWU against Kiley/Koch/
Reagan’s war on the unions. We said the
issues facing this union would not be
settled by an election but by struggle.
We need a whole new breed of labor
leaders. What was needed to win the
battle with Greyhound was militant
mass picketing to stop the buses and
concrete acts of labor solidarity by other
unions. That’s what we fought for — a
national transport workers strike to
bust the union busters. The Committee
also circulated petitions and collected
money for Lauren Mozee and Ray
Palmiero, two phone strikers on the

WesT Coast who face years in prison
because of a vicious racist anti-labor
frame-up. Ed Kartsen spoke at a mass
rally to demand “Freedom and Jobs
Back” for Lauren and Ray in Oakland
October 29. Those who voted for us
realize that the larger issues — restoring
the tradition of militant labor solidarity,
defending the picket line as the battle
front of the working class, fighting for
black, Hispanic and white workers to
mobilize to crush lynch mob terror and
stop Reagan’s mad-dog drive for war
with the Soviets — are the critical issues
facing the labor movement. It’s going to
take mass labor action and our own
workers party fighting for a workers
government to get rid of capitalism
which is the root of the problem. What
we need is a hard core of committed
people that are determined to make the
kind of anti-capitalist program that we
ran on the action program of this union.
Join the Committee and help make that
program an organized force.

Lawe’s sellout policies are running
this union into the ground. His big thing
is the dues checkoff. It was his sellout of
the 1980 strike that enabled the courts
and the TA management to attack the
checkoff in the first place. And in order
to get it back he’s let our wages and
conditions go to hell. The dues checkoff
has helped to keep the Lawe leadership
lazy and dependent on management.
This leadership should have to prove to
the membership why they should pay
their dues each month. The bosses’
offensive against the unions must be
smashed. For the unions it’s fight or die!

The TWU must get off its knees! To
hell with binding arbitration! No more
PATCOs! No more sellouts! Bust the
union busters! An injury to one is an
injury to all! Picket lines mean you
better not cross! Break with the Demo-
crats! Build a workers party to fight for
a workers government!

— Kartsen, Brewer, Smith and the

Committee for a Fighting TWU
29 December 1983

TWUer David Brewer at Spartacist Forum:

How Labor Can Smash the Racists

We reprint below remarks by a New
York transit militant during the discus-
sion period at an NYC public meeting
December 9 titled. "The Class Struggle
and the Spartacist League."

I’m David Brewer from the Commit-
tee for a Fighting Transport Workers
Union Local 100. If anyone is not
familiar with any of the literature we put
out. I’ve got some copies here, hopefully
one of the other brothers in the
Committee has got some of the Grey-
hound leaflets because I handed out all
of mine at the picket line the other night.

Now the Spartacist League calls for
political revolution in the deformed and

degenerated workers states. In a sense
we are for political revolution within the
unions in this country because they have
a rotten sellout leadership and we have
to get rid of it.

Unfortunately we were not a factor in
the 1980 [NYC transit] strike. The 1980
strike was a unique situation in this
union, where you had a majority so-
called “dissident” executive board, the
union out on strike, but there was no
class-struggle opposition among these
so-called dissidents to warn the mem-
bership and prepare the membership
and lead the membership out of the
sellout situation which was going to

happen and was clear was going to
happen.

The dissidents, Arnold Cherry in
particular, had the attitude — you get
this a lot from guys — they had the
attitude, well, the worse the better. The
more unemployment the better. When
their bellybutton starts hitting their
spinal cords, then they’ll begin to wake
up. We don’t believe that. Because
defeat breeds defeat.

Muhammad Ali endorsed the Ray
and Lauren case. And he knows as a
boxer if you go in the ring and you get
your head busted around a little bit

continued on page 9

6 JANUARY 1984

Marxism

and

Bloodthirstiness

Dougherty/Camera 5

October 23 bombing of Marine headquarters in Beirut killed 241 U.S.
servicemen. Spartacist slogan “Marines Out of Lebanon, Now, Alive!”
intersected widespread outrage against Reagan's criminal and senseless
policy.

U.S. imperialism’s trip wires for
World War III extend from one end of
the globe to the other. Reagan is now
engaged in three wars — in Lebanon, El
Salvador and Nicaragua — and in the
Caribbean the U.S. troops are finishing
off the rape of Grenada. American
Pershing 2 nuclear missiles have been
deployed in Europe, aimed directly at
Moscow — at six to eight minutes
striking distance. Decaying capitalism is
readying to plunge humanity once again
into global war, and lurching toward a
nuclear holocaust which threatens the
extinction of life on this planet.

Revulsion and opposition to the mass
slaughter which is endemic to the
imperialists’ class rule is a central part of
the Marxist vision of and struggle fora
classless, stateless society. The hideous
threat of World War III and the
bellicose policies of Washington today
engender justified fears and inchoate
pacifislic sentiments among the world’s
masses, both in the Soviet bloc and the
capitalist countries, sentiments which
can be turned against the imperialist war-
makers. The carnage of World War I
gave birth to the Russian workers
revolution of 19 1 7 — because the Bolshe-
vik Party won the workers, peasants and
soldiers to revolutionary opposition to
their “own" government, and ended
Russia’s participation in the inter-
imperialist slaughter by replacing the
exploiters* state with a government of
the working people.

When over 240 U.S. Marines were
blown to pieces at the Beirut airport
compound in October, the largest
number of American troops killed in a
single day since the height of the Tet
offensive in Vietnam, the American
public reacted with outrage. There were
elements of pacifism, isolationism and
patriotism, and there was a broad grasp
that the Lebanon intervention was
senseless. The outrage was mainly
directed at the imperialist commander
in chief (who immediately launched the
racist bully-boy invasion of tiny Grena-
da for an easy "victory" to distract
attention from thedebacle in Beirut). To
intersect this conjunctural anti-
government sentiment evocatively, the
Spartacist League raised the slogans
“Marines Out of Lebanon, Now. Alive!”
and “U.S. Out of Grenada, Dead or
Alive!" There were those among our
readership who— objecting particularly
to the word “alive” — denounced our
Lebanon slogan as a “social-patriotic”
capitulation to American chauvinism,
counterposing the supposedly radical
sentiment: “the only good one is a dead
one.” But far from radical, this vicarious
bloodthirstiness (reminiscent of some of
the more dim and despicable elements of
the old New Left — draft-dodgers turned
accountants) challenges a fundamental
attitude of Marxism as well as undercut-
ting the central Leninist proletarian
strategy to fight against imperialist war.
Our critics have nonetheless served a
purpose in prompting us to restate some
basic Marxist truths, beginning with the

fact that Marxists are not bloodthirsty.

We are for the victory of just causes.
Necessarily and above all, the centrality
of just causes is the shattering of the
exploiting and oppressing classes and
the victory of socialism. We are social-
ists not least because we are passionately
opposed to war, the gathering together
of large numbers of young workingmen
to be slaughtered in the interests of the
rulers. In this savagely class-divided
world, dominated by the mass murder-
ers of My Lai, the struggle for the
victory of just causes will have a big
physical component. We must stand
therefore for the maximum assembling
of effective force on the just side,
hopefully to demoralize and deter the
forces of reaction so that the actual
casualties are minimized.

But in Lebanon at the moment, there
is little evidence of justice on any side.
At bottom, the present fighting there is a
continuation of the centuries-old
communal/sectarian conflicts between
Muslims and Christians, Sunnis and
Shi’ites, Druze and others. There is no
known force fighting against the U.S.
imperialists — they are all jockeying for
position with the imperialists. Those
whose cause is clearest — the Palestine
Liberation Organization (PLO) — in
fact requested the intervention of the

o

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2

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*

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imperialist troops (a suicidal demand
supported by virtually the entire refor-
mist left in this country, and sharply
opposed of course by us revolutionists).
Now the U.S. is there, having disarmed
the PLO and prepared the way for the
Israeli/ Phalange massacres at Sabra
and Shatila. Arafat’s organization has
split into bloody rivalry, dispersed and
evacuated (under the UN flag and Israeli
shells). The Israelis precipitously with-
drew from Beirut, leaving the Ameri-
cans to take the casualties. The warring
Lebanese communal militias can’t tell
the difference between the Americans
and the Russians and couldn’t care less.
Where is the just, anti-imperialist side in
Lebanon today?

What about the allies of Arafat’s
organization? In Tripoli where he was
besieged by Syrian-backed PLO dissi-
dents, Arafat allied with the Islamic
Unity Movement of Sheikh Shaaban,
which last October massacred some 50
members of the Lebanese Communist
Party. What about the Shi’ites, who are
at the bottom of the social scale in
Lebanon, totally deprived of political
power although they are the largest
group in the country? Shortly before the
Israeli invasion of June 1982. the Shi’ite
Amal carried out murderous attacks
against the PLO in Beirut and southern

Lebanon. As for the Syrians, who vaunt
their rejection of any negotiations with
the Zionists, they made a separate
eeaselire with the Israelis early in the
1982 invasion, leaving the Palestinians
to fight alone.

To be sure, our Lebanon slogan was
highly conjunctural: the situation in the
Near East is changing rapidly. The U.S.
is already drifting in the direction of a
direct conflict with Syria, thanks in
good part to the Reaganites’ irrational
notions of “Soviet surrogateship.”
Should the U.S. go to waragainst Syria,
a complete reevaluation would be
indicated, not least because such a war
could become a dc facto U.S. /USSR
conflict in which Marxists would defend
the Soviet side.

Lebanon is a quagmire for U.S.
imperialism — and this is a good thing.
But we do not gloat over those 240
aluminum caskets, those dead young
men many of whom were considered
expendable in the first place because
they were black We can only despise
those who call for the death of American
soldiers for the crimes of their rulers.
For Marxists there is all the difference
between the men in the field and those
who sent them there to die. We are not
per se interested in the annihilation of
everyone who is executing Washing-
ton’s global bloodthirsty policies. Leb-
anon has aroused strong opposition in
the U.S. population; sending in the
Marines was a stupid act which could
backfire on the U.S. ruling class.

A very different situation obtains in
Grenada, Reagan’s diversion from the
Lebanon disaster. We viewed the U.S.
invasion of Grenada in terms compar-
able to the 1982 Israeli invasion of
Lebanon: racialist atrocities against
another nationality. We had a side in
1982: the defense of the Palestinians
against the attempt to wipe them out.
And we had a side in Grenada: with the
700 Cuban construction workers who
resisted the Yankee invaders. It took
6,000 U.S. troops to “take” Grenada in
the face of the Cubans’ heroic self-
defense, and most of the Cubans were
over 40 years old! The same issue of
Workers Vanguard which our critics
believe marks our decisive capitulation
to “social-patriotism” hailed the Cuban
fighters who — unlike anyone in Leba-
non today — fought the main enemy.
U S. imperialism. In Grenada, we had a
side, and our call was “U.S. Out, Dead
or Alive!”

And in Vietnam! The side of justice
there was unambiguously that of the
National Liberation Front (NLF)/
North Vietnamese forces against U.S.
imperialism. At stake were the national
rights of the Vietnamese people and the
social revolution whose victory was the
only way to definitively drive out
colonialism. Our call for “Victory to the
Vietnamese Revolution!" was not
bloodymindedness but a recognition of
what was necessary to bring peace to
Vietnam after three decades of imperial-

We are for the
victory of just
causes. Left:
liberation of
Saigon (now
Ho Chi Minh Cit]
by the North
Vietnamese arm
in 1975 was a
historic victory ft
world revolution
Right: during
Reagan's rape
of Grenada, we
said, “U.S. Out,
Dead or Alive!"

ist war. In Lebanon, it is precisely the

4

WORKERS VANGUARD

Teheran Embassy Revisited

U.S. postmaster general William
Bolger is calling on true-blue Ameri-
cans to refuse to accept letters posted
with a new Iranian postage stamp
because it is "repulsive, a vicious
distortion of a criminal act by Iran,
and an insult to all Americans.” The
stamp depicts the Iranian seizure of the
U.S. embassy in Teheran on 4 Novem-
ber 1979 with the caption. “The
Takeover of the U.S. Spy Den."
During the 1980 presidential elections
Reagan promised to wipe out the
“humiliation of Teheran" by reassert-
ing American militarism around the
world, primarily directed at the Soviet
Union. And now that Reagan’s in
trouble domestically over the bloody
Lebanese mess, he would no doubt like
to rekindle the chauvinist war fever
produced in America when the Kho-
meiniite Islamic fanatics seized the
Teheran embassy.

Certainly the American embassy in
Teheran was a preeminent symbol of
American imperialism — the home of
the CIA station which masterminded
the overthrow of the nationalist
Mossadeq regime in 1953 and guided
the shah’s bloody police state. Papers
seized by the Iranian “students" (and
later published in book form in Iran
but barred from entering the U.S.)
documented the extensive contacts
between the American embassy and
the haled SAVAK secret police. In
short, there could be enormous justifi-
cation for the seizure of the Teheran
embassy.

But there's another overriding
aspect to this which was totally
ignored by the rad-lib supporters of
Khomeiniite fanaticism who never
have to think about the question of
state power. In the present-day world,
divided as it is among nation-states,
the basis for any international rela-
tions is the diplomatic convention of
"extraterritoriality” for embassies.
Diplomats are, in any case, nothing
but certified spies in any and all cases.
Nonetheless, as we wrote at the time of
the Teheran embassy seizure:

“Diplomatic immunity and territorial
sovereignty of embassies arc seldom
violated even by nations at war,
though every diplomatic office con-
ducts its share of spying and intelli-
gence gathering. These diplomatic
rules of the game are necessary to
maintain international relations be-
tween nation-states, until the nation-
state itself has disappeared in a
socialist world."

— “Iran Embassy Crisis,” WV
No. 244, 23 November 1979

At the same time, we called for the
extradition of the criminal shah,
whose presence in the U.S. provoked
the embassy seizure, and we of course
opposed any U.S. imperialist attack on
Iran in the name of “releasing the
hostages.”

To be sure, certain attacks on
imperialist embassies are clearly sup-
portable: during the Tet offensive in
Vietnam in 1968, for instance, where
the U.S. embassy had become the
command headquarters for the half-
million-strong imperialist army in the

war. the N LF commando attack on the
embassy was a revolutionary act.
Indeed, that single act broke the
omnipotent image of American impe-
rialism worldwide, and that was a very
good thing.

But that had nothing in common
with the Iranian seizure, which was a
diversion designed to enhance Kho-
meini’s reactionary hold on the
masses— let them eat “anti-imperial-
ist" rhetoric. The Iranian leftists, who
had enthusiastically backed the rise
and consolidation of the mullahs’ rule,
mainly hailed the embassy seizure;
within weeks many of them were
themselves the target of the same
Khomeiniite fanatics.

The Soviet Union, the world's first
workers state, had to struggle for many
years against diplomatic quarantine
before its embassies were recognized
by the imperialist powers. The refusal
to recognize a foreign government is
the diplomatic posture of war. Indeed,
the barbarous treatment of Soviet
diplomatic personnel of late is an
index of the Reagan administration’s
drive to smash Soviet state power: e g..
( I ) the invasion of the Soviet diplomat-
ic retreat on Long Island during the
KAL 007 hysteria by a mob led by the
Moonie cult with the connivance of
local authorities; (2) the outrageously
illegal denial of landing rights for
Soviet foreign minister Gromyko, who
was scheduled to address a UN session;
(3) the humiliating prisoner-of-war
treatment of Soviet embassy personnel

AP

New Iranian stamp commemorates
1979 seizure of U.S. embassy.

on Grenada during the recent U.S.
pirate invasion, wherein the Soviet
staff was held for hours and searched
with their hands behind their heads.
Wars have been started by lesser
provocations.

The Soviet leaders understand that
violence against embassies is not to be
taken lightly. In the Teheran embassy
crisis the Soviets, while pointing out
that “this act cannot be taken out of
the overall context of American-
Iranian relations," stated correctly
that the seizure was “not in keeping
with the international convention on
respect of diplomatic privileges and
immunity" (New York Times, 6
December 1979). We necessarily share
this view, as must any state power or
aspirant to state power, such as the
international Spartacisl tendency.

question of social revolution, or even
national liberation, that is missing.

The flip side of the dimwitted New
Left bloodlust exemplified by the SDS
Weathermen was the Socialist Workers
Party’s Vietnam slogan, “Bring Our
Boys Home Now!" Tailored toappeal to
liberal defeatism within sections of the
bourgeoisie, the slogan was a class
betrayal precisely because the interna-
tional proletariat had a side in
Vietnam — “our" boys were the NLF/
North Vietnamese. There were two ways
the Americans could come home:
withdrawal or in body bags. A common
thread runs through the SWP's social-
democratic slogan and the New Leftist
calls for exterminating the Yankee
pigs— both despair of mobilizing the
proletariat to wage class struggle against
imperialist war, and both renounce
appealing to the ranks of the army along
class lines.

Imperialism’s hemorrhaging in Viet-
nam and the consequences of its
defeat— the profound demoralization ol
the U.S. armed forces, the convulsions
throughout American society, the fear
of "another Vietnam" which has stayed
the hand of imperialism— were good
things from the standpoint of the
world's toiling masses. The "Vietnam
syndrome" here at home provided a
breathing space lor national liberation
struggles such as those in the former
Portuguese colonies of southern Africa,
tending to prevent a direct American
intervention into Angola in 1975-76 It
has inhibited Reagan thus far from
trying a wholesale assault with U.S.
troops against the Nicaraguan regime
and the Salvadoran leftist insurgents.
But we do not gloat over the deaths of
rank-and-file U.S. soldiers. Among the
GIs and Marines who were sent to
Vietnam were to be found, as the losing
war dragged on. some of the angriest,
most bitter and most important oppo-
nents of the government’s war. Unlike
the New Left radicals who went, without
blinking an eye. from counseling dralt-
ees and giving GIs flowers to glorifying
their being blown to bits, we sought to
do Marxist propaganda work among
the American troops. We said that
antiwar youth it drafted should seek to

educate their class brothers in the army
about the imperialist character of the
war and their own interest in opposing
it.

The global conflict between the
antiquated imperialist order and the
emancipation of the proletariat does not
reduce itsell to a division between
“good" and “bad" peoples. In battles
between just and unjust causes, Marx-
ists have a side but nevertheless do not
propose as our program the extermina-
tion of all those sent to fight for the
wrong side (a program which, if carried
out. would long ago have done away
with the proletariat of most of the
Western capitalist nations). In wars
where no side represents an advance for
elementary justice, we stand for revolu-
tionary defeatism on both sides. Consid-
er. in addition to Lebanon, the Iran-Iraq
war. Is it “social-patriotiq” to advise the
Iranian and Iraqi troops not to slaugh-
ter each other for their respective
regimes, to turn the guns around and go
home? The squalid Falklands/Malvinas
war was another such case. Neither the
Argentine nor the British working
masses had anything to gain from the
victory of their “own" murderous rulers
in the Falklands; they only stood to lose
their lives. (In fact. Argentina’s defeat
led straight to the downfall of the
military regime; Britain’s victory led to
the re-election of Margaret Thatcher.)
Those who want bloodthirstiness must
look to Thatcher, who ordered the
gratuitous sinking of the Argentine
cruiser Belgrano. taking the lives of
more than 320 young men in the icy
waters of the South Atlantic.

From Verdun to Hiroshima, the
imperialists wage their barbaric, cyclical
wars for profit, turning entire genera-
tions into cannon fodder. Bukharin
wrote about the hideous carnage of the
first World War:

“The leading characteristic ol the war
was that it was murderous to an
unparalleled degree I he levying of
troops advanced with giant strides. I lie
proletariat was positively decimated on
the battlefields. The reports show that
down to March, 1917. the number of
dead, wounded, and missing totalled
25 millions; by I January. 1918. the
number ol the killed had been approxi-

mately 8 millions. If we assume the av-
erage weight of a soldier to [be] 150 lb.,
this means that between I August 1914,
and I January 1918. the capitalists had
brought to market twelve hundred
million pounds of putrid human flesh "
— The ABC of Communism

Or as Rosa Luxemburg put it in her
Junius Pamphlet (1916):

“Dividends are rising — proletarians
falling: and with each one there sinks a
lighter of the future, a soldier of the
revolution, a savior of humanity from
the yoke of capitalism, into the grave "

An end to this slaughter is the goal of
Marxist revolutionists. And we hope to
put an end to the bourgeoisie’s rule with
as little bloodshed as possible. We wish
we could be pacifists, but we can’t — the
old social order does not give way to the
new in a peaceful and orderly fashion.
Isaac Deutscher noted that. “In embrac-
ing the vision of a nonviolent society,
Marxism . . has gone furtherand deeper
than any pacifist preachers of nonvio-
lence have ever done. Why? Because
Marxism laid bare the roots of violence
in our society, which the others
have not done" (“Marxism and Non-
violence," 1966).

Certainly, the Russian Revolution
was a nearly bloodless event, carried
out. Deutscher writes, “in such a way
that, according to all the hostile eyewit-
nesses (such as the Western ambassa-

dors who were then in Petrograd). the
total number of victims on all sides was
ten." It was when the tsarist generals
backed by 13 imperialist armies began
the Civil War that the killing really
began. In sheer arms, the Bolsheviks
were infinitely inferior to the imperialist
powers who intervened to crush the
revolution along with the contras of the
day, the White Army. The Bolsheviks
emerged victorious; Deutscher wrote:
“They agitated, they appealed to the
consciousness of the soldiers, of the
workers in uniform in those interven-
tionist armies. The French navy, sent to
suppress the revolution, rose in mutiny
in Odessa and refused to fight against

the Bolsheviks ’’

While the bourgeoisie can only
maintain its rule over the laboring
majority through the massive use of
intimidation, force and violence, for
Marxists violence is a necessary evil —
one imposed upon the defense of the
struggle for socialism by the bloody-
mindedness of the exploiting class in
power. After the Cuban people defeated
the CIA’s Bay ol Pigs invaders, the
Castro regime traded the captured
gusanos for needed medical supplies. In
FI Salvador, the leftist insurgents have
followed a policy of turning captured
continued on page 9

WORKERS VAN60AR0

□ $5/24 issues of Workers Vanguard
(includes Spartacist) International rates

□ New □ Renewal $20/24 issues— Airmail
$5/24 issues— Seamail

□ $2/9 issues of Young Spartacus

□ $2/4 issues of
Women and Revolution

□ $2/10 introductory issues of
Workers Vanguard
(includes Spartacist)

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Address

City

Phone ( )

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Make checks payable/mall to: Spartacist Publishing Co., Bo* 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116

6 JANUARY 1984

5

Spartacist League Press Release

Moonie God Apologizes to Marxist “Satan”

SPARTACIST LEAGUE/U.S.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Monday, 26 December 1983

Sun Myung Moon's Washington,
D C. daily newspaper, the Washington
Times, was forced today to retract its
libelous attack on two Marxist organi-
zations, the Spartacist League (SL) and
its youth affiliate, the Spartacus Youth
League (SYL).

Attorneys for the SL/SYL had
brought a libel suit on June 14, 1983
against Moon’s Times-Tribune Corp.,
owner of the Washington Times. The
suit filed by attorneys Jonathan W.
Lubell of Cohn, Glickstein, Lurie,
Ostrin, Lubell & Lubell and Rachel H
Wolkenstein, General Counsel for the
SL, charged that the Washington Times'
November 30. 1982 article “Left wing
group linked to D.C. riot” had mali-
ciously and falsely libeled the SL/SYL
as criminal provocateurs, as“provokmg
violence” against the police during the
November 27, 1982 anti-Klan protests
in Washington, D.C.

Today, December 26, the Washing-
ton Times , in a settlement won by the
SL/SYL, published a letter by the SL/
SYL detailing the activities of the SL-
initiated “Labor/Black Mobilization to
Stop the KKK in Washington, D.C.
November 27," along with its own
introduction, including the key state-
ment: “We no longer charge that the
Spartacist L.eague/Spartacus Youth
League provoked violence on that day."

Spartacist League spokesman Walt
Senterfitt commented on the settlement
“This victory has helped spike the
sinister, ultraright Moonies' bid for
respectability and influence in America.
The Washington Times is the Moonie

Unification Church’s attempt to give a
respectable, conservative cover to
Moon’s plans for theocratic dictator-
ship— in the name of fighting ‘the Great
Satan’ of Marxism, of course. But the
Moonie ‘Lord of the Second Advent’
had to apologize to his most hated
‘Satan,’ revolutionary Marxism.”

“Our successful fight against the
Moonies’ libel is an important victory
for all those who hailed the Labor/
Black Mobilization’s stopping the ter-
rorist Klan march on November 27,”
said SL counsel Wolkenstein, “This was
a libel that kills In falsely targeting the
SL/SYL as would-be cop-killers, the
Moonies were trying to set up the
organization’s members and supporters
to be shot first and questioned later. We
took up the suit in self-defense, to
protect not only our good name, but the
right of anyone to organize against

Klan/Nazi terror without being subject
to vicious frame-ups.”

Jonathan Lubell stated, “This settle-
ment is extremely significant in light of
the fact that the media will not generally
settle cases of this nature. The Washing-
ton Times' libels against the SL/SYL
were dangerous as well as false. This
settlement is recognition of the essential
fact that the SL/SYL were not involved
in provoking violence.” Lubell is a
nationally known libel lawyer who
successfully took the case of Herbert v.
Lando to the Supreme Court.

The SL/SYL has overwhelming
evidence exposing the Moonies’ libel,
including a statement submitted by FBI
director William Webster to the 1983
FBI Oversight Hearings of the Senate
Subcommittee on Security and Terror-
ism Webster’s March 10 submission
included the statement that though “a

group known as the Spartacist League
(SPL) was alleged to have been involved
in the violent portion of the anti-Klan
demonstration.” in fact, “investigation
by the Washington Metropolitan Police
Department and the United States
Capitol Police has not uncovered any
indication that the aforementioned
group did more than urge participation
in the anti-A/az; demonstration by
residents of the District of Columbia,
who were and are unsupportive of the
K Ian's goals.”

Wolkenstein noted that the letter
printed today by the Washington Times
was a resubmission by the SL/SYL. The
original letter included the SL’s funda-
mental Marxist position that: “We
believe, and we believe that history
shows, that the liberation of the mass of
the working people and other oppressed
comes only through the conscious mass
education and organization of the
workers. Therefore, any attempts at
substituting ‘heroes’ or any ‘desperate
deeds’ of such heroes (actually despair-
ing individuals in most cases) derails the
valid and necessary path of social
liberation. Naturally enemies of such
liberation are wont to falsely project
Marxists as violent crazies, bomb
throwers and surrogates for sinister
alien forces.”

SL spokesman Walt Senterfitt addi-
tionally stated: “It’s no accident that it is
we Marxists who have ended up
defending the liberties we all cherish
against the Moonies’ attempts to sub-
vert them. We’ve defended those liber-
ties in a small way via this lawsuit, but in
a larger way through our consistent
defense of the right of the working class
to organize, and to fight against race-
terror.” ■

WV Photo

27 November 1982: Moon’s press saw Satanic horror in thousands of black
youth, unionists and revolutionary Marxists triumphantly marching the route
the Klan had vowed to take.

Moonie Libel That Kills

-30 November
1982

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Left-wing group linked to D.C. riot

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Retract Deadly
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(continued from page 12)

lawyers knew our record of successfully
fighting against such dangerous set-up
defamations. They knew that in 1981,
we sued California Attorney General
(now governor) George Deukmejian for
including the Spartacist League on a list
of “terrorists” with which “law enforce-
ment would have to deal.” As a result of
the suit and campaign, the Attorney
General’s office was forced to retract
and send the retraction to police
agencies around the country.

And they knew of the successful
lawsuit in the case of Jane Margolis, a
supporter of the SL and an elected
delegate to the Communications Work-
ers of America (CWA) 1979 convention,
who was pulled off the convention floor
and held incommunicado by the Secret
Service when Jimmy Carter addressed
the union. This outrage was meant to
brand her as someone too dangerous to
be in the same room with the president
The lawsuit forced the Secret Service to
officially apologize and hand over
$3,500 which Margolis donated to the
CWA Defense Fund.

I he Spartacist League didn’t ask for
this case. We took it on to defend our
party and its supporters from a set-up
libel that kills. As we said on 14 June
1983 when we filed the suit: “We do not
intend to be nameless, faceless victims
who can, with impunity, be blown away
in the dead of night.” We fought to win
And we did win, against the most
vicious, anti-Communist, and vindic-
tively litigious outfit in the world. ■

The Moonie press framed up the
Labor/Black Mobilization in an article
on 30 November 1982. accusing its
organizers of provoking violence
against the police. The Washington
Times charged the SL/SYL had “car-
ried containers of heavy metal bolts and
other missiles to be handed out in the
crowd for throwing.” They claimed,
“The Sparlacists were handing projec-
tiles to anyone who wanted them, even
children. I he article portrayed us as
some kind of paramilitary outfit whose
members wear “blue, black or red berets
according to their rank.” The Washing-
ton Tunes claimed we refused to hand

out political posters to non-members,
handing them rocks instead. This pack
of lies was indeed libel that kills. In its
supreme arrogance the Moonie press
assumed the most grotesque libels could

be published about the Spartacist
League in preparation lor anything to
be done to us. But now the press of the
Moonie god has been forced to apolo-
gize to the Marxist "Satan."

OP THE DISTRICT OF.WLUHBIX

LEAGUE !

vork VO00T ;

YOUTH LEAGUE

plat ntltls,

against -

jMHUNICATIONS, INC.
th Avenue
K New York

Detendants.

^ ,PlalntCl^

Only six months after we filed the complaint on June 14, we
got a retraction from the Washington Times.

WV Phe

VV V rill

Legal team brings case to successful conclusio
Jonathan Lubell (right) and Spartacist Leaqi
general counsel Rachel Wolkenstein.

6

WORKERS VANGUARD

What the Moonies Refused to Print

We reprint below our statement of
political purpose on the successful anti-
Klan action on 27 November 1982,
refuting the libelous charges that the
SL/SYL provoked violence against the
police. Submitted as a letter to be
published with the Washington Times’
retraction / introduction, this statement
was rejected by the Moonie press.

To The Editor:

The Spartacist League (SL) and the
Spartacus Youth League (SYL) submit
this letter to the Washington Times in
settlement of our libel lawsuit against
the Times-Tribune Corporation for
publishing an article on the anti-Klan
demonstrations in Washington, D.C.,
November 27, 1982 accusing the SL and
the SYL of provoking violence against
the police. We here describe the SL and
SYL initiated Labor/Black Mobiliza-
tion to Stop the KKK. summarized
from our public press. Workers Van-
guard and Young Spartacus , written
immediately after this demonstration
Our description of the events is a full
and accurate accounting of the SL and
SYL initiated demonstrations. More-
over. our description is verified by the
widely shown videotape of that
demonstration.

The Labor/ Black Mobilization was
built through the participation of
organized labor — over 70 union locals,
officials and executive boards endorsed.
A permit for the rally at Constitution
and First Avenues, near the Capitol
Building and the beginning of the Klan's
route of march, was secured from the
appropriate police authorities on No-
vember 22. During the next four days,
the SL and SYL posted thousands of
placards and distributed hundreds of
thousands of leaflets announcing the
Labor/Black Mobilization rally.

The Labor/ Black Mobilization rally
began at about 9:30 AM on November
27 and continued until about 12:40 PM,
engaging the participation of 5,000,
predominantly black and trade union-
ist, who listened to speeches and took
part in militant chanting, favorites being
“KKK — Ain’t no way! You ain’t gonna
march today!” and ”1,2, 3, 4 — Time to
finish the Civil War! 5. 6. 7, 8 — Forward
to a workers state!”

For approximately one and one half
hours, the demonstrators were face to
face with the police who had lined the
Constitution Avenue side of the rally
site. At 12:40 it was learned that the
Klan would not march and, as the police
withdrew, the demonstrators spontane-
ously entered Constitution Avenue,
proclaiming, “We stopped the Klan! We
stopped the Klan!" Protesters rushed to
the top of Capitol Hill and then wheeled
around and headed toward Pennsylva-
nia Avenue to Lafayette Park, the
Klan’s intended destination. Thousands
streamed up what was to have been the
KKK march route, stopped traffic, and
exchanged victory salutes with drivers.

Prior to and at the time the Labor/
Black Mobilization demonstrators en-
tered Lafayette Park, on the opposite
side of the Park, a police riot, including
the use of tear gas, was in progress
against others who had assembled near
Lafayette Park. The Labor/Black Mo-
bilization demonstrators were directed
by our monitors to the center of Lafay-
ette Park, away from police charges and
tear gassing. A brief rally was held to
assert the absence of the Klan.
After this spirited rally, the crowd
was dispersed quickly and peacefully;
monitors led the demonstrators away
from the police and tear gassing and out
of the park, without incident. Many
hundreds of protesters then attended a
victory party at the Bellvue Hotel in the
Capitol area.

The SL chant ”1.2. 3, 4 — Time to
finish the Civil War! 5. 6,7, 8 — Forward
to a workers state!" caught the spirit of
the day. Black chattel slaves were
emancipated by that great war only to
be stripped of political rights and eco-
nomically subjugated. Blacks were
integrated into American economy but
sequestered at the bottom. That is why it
is going to take the working-class
conquest of power, a socialist revolu-
tion, to lay the basis for black freedom.
While the liberal-led civil rights move-
ment held out the promise of black
equality, black people continue to be
ground up by unemployment and
poverty, and kicked in the face by the
Klan's preferred candidate in the White
House. Furthermore. Washington. D C.
is not simply 75 percent black, it’s a
Southern black town. Feelings ran deep

that day because many of the partici-
pants had first hand experience of racist
terror of the KKK nightriders. That’s
why so many people turned out and why
our chant was so popular.

The SL and SYL initiated Labor/
Black Mobilization rally near the
Capitol and spontaneous march to
Lafayette Park were controlled, orderly
and passed without any incidence of
violence. A monitors squad had been
formed, including several members each
from the Laborers, AFSCME, Team-
sters and Transit unions, as well as ten
International Longshoremen Associa-

tion members from Norfolk and union
supporters of the SL. It is a credit to the
monitors and participants in that
demonstration that there were no
incidents of provocation or violence
directed at the police.

Nevertheless, the media — with the
notable exception of the black press —
portrayed the anti-Klan demonstration
as widespread violence and looting. In
fact, there was a minimum amount of
disorder and it was provoked by the
police. What happened on November 27
was that the Klan was stopped. But it
was only the Washington Times that
named the Spartacist League and the
Spartacus Youth League as provoca-
teurs or the source of looting and
violence against the police.

Many of the victims of the police riot
had been at other anti-Klan demonstra-
tions that day. Aside from the Labor/

Black Mobilization, there were several
smaller demonstrations, the largest of
these the rally called by the All Peoples
Congress (APC), of Sam Marcy’s
Workers World Party (WWP) which
took place at McPherson Square.
There, the young blacks who had been
mobilized and promised anti-Klan
action were frustrated by the political
reformism of that rally and lack of
proper outlet for their rage against the
Klan.

Having stopped the Klan by its mere
militant presence, neither the SL, the
SYL, nor any other component of our

mass Labor/ Black Mobilization dem-
onstration sought, participated in or
condoned any violence against police-
men or any other persons. This attitude
and kind of activity flows from the
Marxist belief which separates us from
any species of terrorist or anarchist. We
believe, and we believe that history
shows, that the liberation of the mass of
the working people and other oppressed
comes only through the conscious mass
education and organization of the
workers. Therefore, any attempts at
substituting “heroes” or any "desperate
deeds" of such heroes (actually despair-
ing individuals in most cases) derails the
valid and necessary path of social
liberation. Naturally enemies of such
liberation are wont to falsely project
Marxists as violent crazies, bomb
throwers and surrogates for sinister
alien forces. ■

Our slogan
“Finish the
Civil War-
Forward to a
Workers State!"

caught the
militant spirit of
November 27.

FBI Director’s Testimony
Exposes Moonie Libel

We reprint here excerpts from FBI
director Webster's recently publicly
released testimony and submission
before the Senate Subcommittee on
Security and Terrorism.

Mr Chairman, it is my understand-
ing that the violence which occurred
on November 27, 1982. has not been
tracked to any group or organization. 1
believe that all of those arrested for

engaging in violent activity were found
to be residents of the District of
Columbia; whereas, the groups that
were petitioning for parade rights were
from outside the District of Columbia.
1 cannot say at this point that there was
no manipulation of the District of
Columbia residents at that time, nor
can I say with certainty that there was
manipulation. It is the current consen-
sus of all law enforcement agencies
that the violence which occurred was
spontaneous and a reflection of out-
rage that the Ku Klux Klan people
were not going to march, were not
going to be exposed to whatever form
of protest these organizations intended
to register, whether it was simply to
boo or chant or actually throw rocks,
stones, or shoes, (p. 38)

A group known as the Spartacist
League (SPL) was alleged to have been
involved in the violent portion of the
anti -Klan demonstration

Investigation by the Washington
Metropolitan Police Department and
the United States Capitol Police has

WV Photo

27 November 1982: Labor/Black Mobilization stopped the Klan!

not uncovered any indication that the
aforementioned group did more than
urge participation in the anti -Klan
demonstration by residents of the
District of Columbia, who were and
are unsupportive of the Klan's goals.
The SPL is not the subject of a FBI
investigation (p. 68)

6 JANUARY 1984

7

An Unusual and Gratifying Victory

Our victory against the Moonie
press is certainly unusual and
gratifying. It is also a little per-
plexing to have secured this
apology from a group which has
declared revolutionary Marxism
the root of all evil, indeed “Satan”

himself. At bottom we knew the
Washington Times libel would be
patently obvious to jurors of
nearly any political persuasion or
social composition. But we also
knew truth was not enough togive
us victory. Finally, we cannot

know for certain why they did it.
All we can say is that we are damn
glad it’s over. But we will do it all
overagain ifwehaveto — asanact
of self-defense. We have a re-
markable record of success in
beating back the attempts to label

us as “terrorists.” Once again we
declare: “A Workers Party Has
the Right to Organize!” And we
will continue to use every resource
at our disposal to protect the party
and program of the future prole-
tarian revolution.

Fear of Discovery?

SUTtblOb cooirr Of TW OUTHICT Of COUJW1*

Subpoenas were served on the

Washington Times : the pre-trial

TOC JTMTbCHT LUOJI •-* Tvl irMTbCVl .

TOOT. . { ,

discovery process was started in

VIllMllll.

. sotici to rut

July, before the Moonies an-

-M.lx.,- OtfOSITIO. LVS

• ddw® ro*

mas OO.LO rowianoii, i«c. . roceocrio. or

swered our legal complaint. The

iuiu tools . ' ooowtm

Washington Times editors and

0«t«*4**tt .

reporters who prepared, wrote

and edited the article were served

• 1 * S i

with a Notice to Take Deposition

»! ncf rut •OTIC! THAT, punuint to Bwl* )« of «ho

and Demand for Production of

Swporlo, c~.i »Ih - Civil. fUI«HI* «t«tv:ut umui

Documents on the preparation.

• *o TOC 5f»rt«cu« voirm lucuc »b«ll • tl>« drfwflllo"

UMlMtlo. of liliri..! «T«1 vo.LO COWU»lC«T10«i . IOC..

investigation and decision-making

Or III raplojw. lb* vTIIO. *b. •uvvrvlf*. ».• *p*f ft lox.

process preceding the publication

.fill Of .nd/Of vdlllbf of .Hid. C~bll»»v4 >»

of the article. The Washington

Tb. •* ,K 1 Xf ton T Ixx • X> «©.—<-« 10. l»*». .•*»>>»•

Times faced legal and public

-L.lt-.lnf f.ouf. lixi.1 lo o.c. not*. OX in. >rd «•» Ol
• 111) c«Hrclif .1 10.00 » « . bolor. . xx, .r, public or oix.f

scrutiny and disclosure of its

P..IOX xulbeilivd bf IM lo .iolxl.l.r oolhb. .1 lb* olllc.

editorial and publishing stan-

ol Tlf.f .xd oollox., II0J llll. 0II..I. *“"• »•*"

dards, guidelines and procedures.

...Xlxjlox, O.C- J0011, .«0 Ib.l ..Id 4*pon*xl If f*fu.«l*a

Attorney for the SL Jonathan

lo produce *i »r*« forth io **•

• ch*dul« actecried h»r»to

Lubcll stated: “We felt that

mot to»* "ot tor*

through our own extensive investi-

July IS. IMJ

gation and the anticipated results

1 1 cn* * ourmrrt

lies llth m «*

of pre-trial discovery, we would be

1109) 5o»-moo

able to uncover sufficient informa-

corm. ctic*mi*. Luatic. c*t*im.

UJ* ILL y UJ»Cl*t /

tion concerning the manner in

_

which their article had been put

of ***1»C«

m£ tor*. Mot tor* 100 IS

together that we could establish

urn w-«ooo

the required fault by the Washing-

• rvj

MCNtL M MOL*D»STCIM

ton Times in publishing the

IS* 0«uodu«y

mot tor*, mot tor* 10001

article." The Washington Times

till) DMIII
Mloiruyi for flolntlff*

chose to retract and publish the

SL/SYL letter.

ImW^Dii hr"g*.l ***<&.** fcm

Moonie Press Empire

Fascists, Gusanos and Moonies

Moonie Machinations in Latin America

How “Koreagate” Exposed the Moonies

Moonie Libel That Kills

ARE YOU A TARGET
OF THE MOONIES? .

We stopped the Klan' '

Now the Moonies want to stop us.

The Moonies have plenty to hide. Our press, WV and Young Spartacus.
exposed the sinister designs and connections of this ultraright-wing cult.

“Moonies Against Our Children”

The deadly threat behind the Moon-
ie Washington Times' libel against our
organization generated widespread
concern and anger among many
parents, relatives and friends of SL/
SYL supporters and members. We
print below a draft letter, intended for
publication in the New York Times.
worked on by parents and close
relatives of members.

Beyond expressing obvious concern
for their children's safety in the face of
this ominous Moonie set-up attempt,
this draft parents' letter also makes a
broader and fundamental point that
unlike Moon's cub of the "great God
Father." the SL/SYL finds repugnant
such l ulls' attempts to forcibly break
members' deep personal connections
with their families. For us. the person-

al relations of children and their
parents are solely a matter for the
individuals involved. Our organiza-
tion is based on a political program:
whether or not you agree with it. at
least with us you can have rational
political discourse. In fact some
parents thought the letter's comment
that they "do not necessarily like or
approve of their children's participa-
tion in the SL/SYL was too categori-
cal. noting they found that commit-
ment admirable.

Parents and relatives from wide-
ly varying backgrounds — including
working-class families, former Com-
munist Party supporters, business-
men. former government employees,
and conservatives — expressed willing-
ness to sign and publish such a letter.

We were preparing to proceed with
publication — while seeking to suitably
take into account protection for
signatories from the Moonies' well-

Draft Statement

Our children are political supporters
and in many cases active members of
the Spartacist League and the Sparta-
cus Youth League (SL/SYL).

The cult of Sun Myung Moon,
known as the Moonies. has criminally
libeled the SL/SYI in its newspaper,
the Washington Times (30 November
1982). The Mooniescharge the Sparta-
cists with “provoking violence” against
the police at a protest against the Ku
Klux Klan in Washington. DC. on
November 27, 1982. The Moonies
have thus set up our children for police
harassment and repression.

We do not necessarily like or
approve of ourchildren's participation
in these Marxist Trotskyist organiza-
tions. But whatever our differences
with ourchildrcn. we know that theSL
and SYL are not violent, criminal or
terrorist organizations. They do not
provoke attacks on the police.

Sun Myung Moon is a self-
appointed “new messiah" from a
South Korean munitions plant who
demands absolute worship of himselt
as god. Additionally, Moon himself
and his senior followers have long been
deeply involved, internationally and
domestically, in sinister financial
chicanery. The Moonies threaten our
cultural values whatever our ethnic or

known vindictiveness toward individ-
uals opposing them — when the suc-
cessful settlement was reached. We
would like here to express our thanks
to all the parents and relatives in-
volved in working on this letter for
then thoughtful comments and
suggestions.

religious origin. The Moon-cult breaks
its young members from their most
deeply felt values, family loyalties and
cultural heritage. We have seen the
results in the glassy-eyed stares of
flower-selling children and the mass
marriages arranged by Moon himself.

Marxism does not lead our children
to break personal ties with their
lannlies The Spartacist League does
not rob parents of their children

Our children do not engage in
deception in their political work; they
are clear about what they stand for.
We can agree with U.S. Senator
Daniel Patrick Moynihan who re-
marked during a Harvard speech when
he was U.N. Ambassador, that the
Spartacists “sail under their own
colors.” He read from a Spartacist
leaflet which stated the intention “to
build a socialist youth organization
which can intervene in all social
struggles with a revolutionary pro-
gram based on the politics of Marx,
Lenin, and Trotsky.” And he added:
“It is doubtless perverse to do so. but I
happen to find that an honorable
statement of purpose" ( Commentary .
December 1972).

As parents of SL/SYI members and
supporters, we endorse the legal light
ol the SL/SYL against the Moonie
trameup and criminal defamation.

Moonie mass marriage In Madison Square Garden. The "True Parent”
designates the couples, who consummate the act only at the behest of
Unification Church authorities.

8

WORKERS VANGUARD

Victories Cost Money

The successful conclusion of the
libel suit against the Moonies' Wash-
ington Times newspaper is not only a
tremendous success for the Spartacist
League/Spartacus Youth League. It is
a victory for the more than 5,000 black
citizens of Washington, D C., Norfolk
shipyard workers. New York City
transit workers and other unionists
who joined with us in the Labor/Black
Mobilization that stopped the Ku
Klux Klan on 27 November 1982.

This victory also belongs to all who
have opposed the fanatical ultra-right
Moon empire and its "respectable"
mouthpiece for Central American
death squads. South African apartheid
butchers, Argentine and Uruguayan
military torturers, Japanese fascists.
South Korean spies and the anti-
Soviet lynch mobs staged by the
Moonies.

Many have been afraid to openly
take on the Moonies, with their vast
billions, prestigious lawyers, influen-
tial and sinister connections. We have
shown they can -be fought, and can be
defeated. But this victory did not come
cheap. Legal fees alone were over
$24,000, investigative costs over
$4,000. Total costs for this lawsuit,

including legal and printing, publicity
and other expenses, have amounted to
over $30,000. Only a fraction of this
has been raised so far. We need your
generous contributions to pay for
today's victory, preparing the way to
win tomorrow’s battles.

It’s 1984 in Reagan’s racist,
capitalist America. And the Partisan
Defense Committee needs your help.
Money is urgently needed to defend
Lauren Mozee and Ray Palmiero,
phone strikers fired and framed up on
felony charges for defending their
union picket line against a racist scab
assault Our successful lawsuit against
the Moonie “lihel that kills" helps to
undercut the concerted attempt to set
up as "terrorists" leftists and other
perceived political opponents of the
government. Now the PDC is backing
the SL legal suit against the new FBI
Guidelines which mean increased
witchhunting of groups and individu-
als labeled as “terrorist” and ‘‘violent ."

Celebrate this victory against the
Moonie press with a contribution to
the PDC. Send your checks to the
Partisan Defense Committee, P.O.
Box 99, Canal Street Station, New
York. NY 10013.

ARE YOU

TARGET
OF THE
MOONIES;

Th« Pjrtitjn Orient' Commit'"

, *jn5h*fl * «<"P*ign to public!" jnd
v SpJr,Jci‘' L..fu./Sp.n«0.

Youth l,jgu, Mw |lmu„ 4 .ntl

a Moonie framrup. Th. Moonie,
MglDglep lUDfi f*l»«ly Jnd vlclouilv
,h* SL/SYl, Initiator, of the
J.OOO-ttrong Labor/Black Moblli.ailon
•> .topped the KKK in Wj.hinglon, D.C.
November 27. 1982. Jt criminjl provoc-
Heur*. And the Moonlrt have more than
the Sparlacitt, in their tight,. Thi,
cate need, and detervet your tupport.

Our successful suit is a victory for
the democratic and cultural values
prized by many Americans, values
which the sinister Moonie cult
seeks to destroy.

Marxism...

(continued from page 5)

enemy soldiers over to the Red Cross
unharmed — an effective incentive to
mass desertion from the junta’s army.
Contrast this with the fascistic death
squads who operate against the popu-
lace under the principle of “the only
good one is a dead one." The principal
weapon in the proletariat’s arsenal is not
force perse, but the ability to undermine
the capitalist regiments by appealing to
common class interests. Even in defense
of just causes, Marxists are guided by a
rational calculus and not by bloodlust.

There are situations in which
insufficient force used initially leads to
greater bloodshed ultimately. Had the
Nicaraguan Sandinistas beheaded the
counterrevolutionary pro -Somocista

organizations, e g., by trials of Somo-
za’s torturers by revolutionary tribu-
nals, the Nicaraguan masses today
would not be forced to fight and die
against the contra invaders. We raise the
slogan "Kill the Invaders!” not because
we want to see a lot of dead bodies lying
around, but because if every little band
the CIA sends over is wiped out, and the
counterrevolutionary capitalist "fifth
column" in Nicaragua is expropriated as
a class and its power broken, bloodshed
will be minimized, while conciliation
strengthens the hand of the U.S. -backed
contras who aim to drown in blood the
possibility of socialist revolutionary
development in Nicaragua.

Or consider the U.S.’ Korean Air
Lines Flight 007 Cold War provocation
against the Soviet Union last summer, a
grotesque example of the ruling class’s
willingness to cynically squander hu-
man life. The Soviet military took the
only course ol defensive action possible,
under the circumstances — i.e.. given the
refusal of the jet to communicate, the
Russians were unable to identify it while
at the same time a U.S. sp\ plane was
clearly in contact with it But we do not
“hail" the shooting down ol 200-plus
innocent civ ilians. we solidari/e with the
J ASS statement of 2 September 1983
" I ass is authorized to state that in the
leading circles ol the Soviet Union
regret in expressed over the loss of
human life and at the same time a
resolute condemnation ol those who
consciously or as a result ol criminal
disregard have allowed the death ol
people and are now Irving lo use this
occurrence for unseemly political
aims.”

Marxists do not support nor advocate

6 JANUARY 1984

the killing of innocentcivilians — be it on
board KAL 007, an Israeli bus in
Jerusalem, a pub in Northern Ireland.
With KAL. the fact is that the Soviets
did not knowingly down a civilian
passenger jet. Had they done so, we said,
it would have been worse than a
barbaric atrocity, it would have been an
idiocy worthy of the Israelis. This
seemingly uncontentious position
against wanton bloodshed provoked
charges of “softness" from critics whose
vicarious bloodthirstiness tends to be
directly proportional to the distance
from their own appetites. From a safe
distance, the petty-bourgeois radicals
embrace the "good" peoples (if neces-
sary first inventing them, as in Lebanon
today) and for the "bad," well, the only
good one is a dead one. Reactionary in
itself, such an attitude — completely
divorced as it is from Marxist class
analysis — necessarily gives way to anti-
communist public opinion. Thus we see
many of yesterday’s "radicals" joining
up ideologically with U.S. imperialism
over the plight of “poor little Afghani-
stan" and the crushing of counterrevolu-
tionary Polish Solidarnosc. (In Afghan-
istan, the “freedom fighters" are
fanatical Islamic defenders of the bride
price, while the “evil superpower"
defends the rights of the Afghan people
to emerge from the ninth century,
including the right of women to learn to
read. In Poland, "underdog" Lech
Walesa and Solidarnosc represent the
Vatican. Western bankers and the CIA
in league against the Polish Stalinist
bureaucracy, threatening a bloody
return to capitalist "democracy," i.e.,
wage slavery and NATO missiles.)

On another level, there is the conflict
between the nationalist/Stalinist and
the Trotskyist approaches to the anti-
Na/i resistance during World War II.
The policy of the French Resistance was
to attack lone German privates standing
out on lonely streets at night trying to
pick up girls: a typical “tactic” was to cut
off their genitals and stull them in their
mouths. Predictably, this didn’t lead to
too many German recruits to the cause
ol the Resistance. The French Trotsky-
ists sought to appeal to the class
consciousness ol the German soldiers
(many of whose parents were Commu-
nists and Social Democrats), carrying
out at great cost a policy of fraterniza-
tion Around the publication of Arhei-
ter unci Soldat (“Worker and Soldier”),
a clandestine newspaper for German
class-conscious soldiers, they formed a

Trotskyist secret cell within the German
navy at Brest.

T oday there are a half a million young
men in the Bundeswehr (West German
army) and, as in the past, they are likely
to be sent off to fight for unjust causes.
We would work fortheirdefeat, but that
does not mean that we propose the
extermination of every German worker
in uniform. We seek rather the bursting
asunder from within, i.e., from below, of
the imperialist armed forces as part of
the struggle to realize comrade Lenin’s
profoundly humanist view of the “so-
cialist system of society, which, by
abolishing the division of mankind into
classes, by abolishing all exploitation of
man by man, and of one nation by other
nations, will inevitably abolish all
possibility of war.”*

TWU...

(continued from page 3)
you’ll be less likely to come out looking
for the knockout punch the next round
because defeat breeds defeat and victory
breeds victory.

So Reagan is looking for a victory He
got it in Grenada. But we had a victory
in Washington, D.C. [on 27 November
1 982] — a very important victory, a sense
that you can win something. The
Spartacist League and its supporters are
coming to be seen as the major force
in anti-fascist work in this country,
increasingly drawing in the labor move-
ment, Now you hear this term “labor/
black defense.” Now. what does that
mean? The labor movement is black
people’s best ally in this country.
Increasingly through these anti-fascist
actions the labor movement has come in
more and more to play an active role,
including what we saw in Washington —
where heavily black unions endorsed,
mobilized and brought their members
out to stop the Klan.

Now Arnold Cherry doesn't see
things this way, He has no intention ol
mobilizing the ranks ol the union. It’s a
basic difference we have with him. He
relies on other forces: the Democratic
Party, the courts, the arbitration pro-
ceedings which he has now denounced
alter he had initially supported them.
But mobilize the rank and file? No way.
no way. Because he’s got a job to do for
the capitalists. He’s the Jesse Jackson of
our union.

It Willie Turks [black NYC transit
worker murdered by a racist lynch mob]
had had a gun he 'might still be alive. The

gut reaction of the union leadership, in
that shop, that next morning, when they
found out that one ol their members had
been murdered by the racists up the hill,
should have been to call everybody out.
Out on the sidewalk. We’re going up
there and we’re going to tell these people
that you’re not going to get away with
this stuff anymore.

That’s the kind of strategy that
Arnold Cherry and the[TWU Local 100
president] John Lawes don’t want to
hear. But that’s our strategy. Our
strategy is to mobilize the rank and file
of this union and through that mobiliza-
tion to forge a leadership which can take
power in this union. If we had been a
significant factor during the 1980 strike
we would have been fighting like crazy
for strike committees in each location —
terminal, barn, depot — to decide what
we’re going to do. We’re going to go
back to work? Let’s see what the
conditions are. Let’s read it. do what the
coal miners do — you read it out word
for word and discuss it. If you don't like
it you take it outside and burn it. Then
you go back to work if you do like it. But
you don’t go back unless you know what
you’re going to go back for.

I asked one of Cherry’s main support-
ers. Roger Nichols, “Well, if you guys
had tried to keep out guys after the
sellout came down, how much do you
think you could have kept out?” Hesaid,
“Oh, I think only about half of the
transportation system.” I said, “Roger,
half of the transportation system not
going back to work? Now listen, first of
all even before, during the strike, you’d
have to get the strike committees, you’d
have to get guys in carpools going to
other unions, newsletters, a strike
bulletin — from the rank and file, from
the opposition, knowing that there is a
sellout coming down the line. Warning
the workers, telling them what is going
on, sending delegations to the Long
Island Rail Road, Metro-North, Staten
Island railroad, PATH, trying to shut
these places down.” And he said. “Half
the subways.” I said, “You stupid fool,
you might have had to make a fast
retreat, but if you had kept out half of
the subways you may have been able to
turn it around and bring out the rest of
the system.” They think that defeat is
good because everyone will vote for us
the next time around. But no, John
Lawe got an overwhelming vote because
people got conservative. They didn’t
want to fight anymore. Because they
had gotten beat so bad.

So you've had a lot of defeats.
November 27th was a victory. The
policies that the Spartacist League calls
for, and supporters in the unions fight
for, can lead to victory. And of course a
lot of guys say, “Well, we agree with 75
percent, but when you start talking
about Russia people say ‘oh, shit’.” But
that was a victory. So we have to
talk about Russia. Because, like Karl
Marx said, the working person has no
country. And so we are international-
ists, we’re working class and we’re
revolutionary. ■

Women and Revolution No. 27

Subscription $2/4 issues

Make checks payable 'mail lo

Spartacist Publishing Co

Box 1377 GPO, New York. NY 10116

9

Greyhound Strikers Were Sold Out!

Every ingredient necessary for victory
in the Greyhound strike was there
except one: a leadership determined to
win. After the labor tops had pushed
through their sellout and the strike was
over, the leader of the ATU Council of
Greyhound Local Unions. Harry Ro-
senblum, admitted: “It was a game of
hardball and they played harder ball
than we did” (New York Times, 20
December). Certainly no one can fault
the ranks. In the face of the company’s
announced intention to replace them
with scabs, they went on strike. They
took hundreds of arrests and one
militant picketers’ leader, Ray Phillips,
was murdered, crushed to death under
the wheels of a scab-driven bus. There
was wide sentiment throughout the
ranks of labor to fight alongside
Greyhound workers to smash the union-
busting. But the ATU and AFL-CIO
tops did everything to quash strike
militancy. They acceded to injunctions
limiting picketing, and in many cases
volunteered to limit the picketing. The
Lane Kirkland gang refused to call other
sections of the working class out on
strike, instead pushing the same impo-
tent consumer boycott that led to defeat
at PATCO.

Only a few days after Greyhound
workers rejected the company’s latest
surrender terms by a 96 percent margin,
union leaders in connivance with federal
mediators cooked up a virtually identi-
cal deal to shove down their throats. In
the end, strikers voted to return to work
because they felt there was no way to
win with the leadership they had. The
settlement was a massive sellout: wage
and benefit cuts averaging at least
$ 1 3,000 per striker over three years, and
a new two-tier pay structure that
drastically slashes wages for new hires

even more. The 1 ,500 scabs hired during
the strike have all been retained on the
payroll, while some 100 strikers have
been fired! The bureaucrats sacrificed
the strike militants, among the best
union fighters, in order to ram through
the sellout. This criminal betrayal
reflects the commonality of interest
between union tops and the company.

The Spartacist League called for
mobilizing the broad power of labor to
beat back the scabherding and govern-
ment strikebreaking: for mass, militant
picket lines to stop the buses and a
nationwide transport workers strike of
Teamsters, rail and airline workers,
longshoremen and transit workers. The
bureaucrats instead preached reliance
on the capitalist Democratic Party
politicians, petitioning Mayor Feinstein
in San Francisco, Governor Cuomo in
New York and others to “ban"
scabbing— and all the while the Demo-
cratic city bosses were launching cop
assaults on the pickets. The labor
bureaucracy's alliance with the Demo-
crats is a knife in the back for the
workers. With the class struggle heating
up in a presidential election year, the
union tops’ job is to prevent labor
struggle from embarrassing their bud-
dies, the Democratic Party “friends of
labor.”

The fake-leftists share this perspective
of a Democrat-led “progressive alli-
ance." So they glorified the AFL-CIO
rallies designed to do anything except
stop the buses. In San Francisco
members of Socialist Action offered
their services as goons against militants
(see article on page 2). The Marcyite
Workers World Party, which was up to
its neck in the phony support commit-
tees, failed to call for a “no” vote on the
settlement and now claim, incredibly.

that “there are unfortunately some
damaging features in the proposed
contract which cloud and obscure [!!!]
what would otherwise be a full-scale
victory” (Workers World , 15 Decem-
ber). The Communist Party, too. had
praise for the Lane Kirkland gang: “But
the labor movement deserves congratu-
lations [in] progressive quarters for
its solidarity with the Greyhound
workers. It is a far cry from the attitude
shown by organized labor during the
PATCO struggle...” (Daily World. 24
December).

In apologizing for the bureaucrats,
the reformist left was far to the right of
some ATU officials who forthrightly
blasted the sellout. One such example
was David Mix, president of ATU Local
Division 1 225 in San Francisco. Though
Mix' call for a proxy fight among
Greyhound shareholders was a dead
end, at least he knew a rat when he
smelled one, and wanted to fight. In a
leaflet issued December 7 to his mem-
bers, Mix wrote:

“It appears to be a repeat of the Chrysler
and UAW situation. Approximately 3-
1/2 years ago they gave concessions to
save jobs. That was just the beginning,
they have madeconcession after conces-
sion and today they have less than 50%
of their employees. So much for

concessions to save jobs

“It is not time to retreat — retreat at this
time will be devastating and we will not
be given the opportunity to return to the
battlefield...”

But despite the Greyhound defeat, the
prospects are for sharper class struggle.
With an upturn in the economy, the
morale of the working class has im-
proved. The companies are still seeking
to exact the same massive concessions,
thereby setting the stage for sharp
conflict. Workers are more willing to

fight back against the fake bankruptcy
scams and open union-busting of the
bosses. The government’s own figures
show that strike activity is up 50 percent
from a year ago. But the labor leaders
who yesterday falsely claimed that “you
can’t strike during a depression”are still
sabotaging the strikes.

The powerful labor upsurge of the
’30s that smashed the open shop in basic
industry depended on the intersection of
increased combativity of workers with
the presence of tested militants to lead
the battles. The initial onset of the
Depression enabled the employers to
extract massive wage cuts. In the first
period most of the strikes — essentially
desperate rearguard battles — were de-
feated. But with a slight economic
recovery in 1933-34, hundreds of thou-
sands of workers flocked to the AFL
Yet the AFL leaders refused to fight.

The bureaucracy and reformists
today claim that Roosevelt saved the
day by then passing legislation enabling
the unions to organize. Far from it! The
industrial unions were built by great
“illegal’’ strike struggles that beat back
government strikebreaking by Roose-
velt liberals. In 1934 three crucial battles
were won: at Toledo Auto-Lite, the
Minneapolis Teamsters and San Fran-
cisco General Strike. All were led by
revolutionaries or professed revolution-
aries and were successful despite the
sabotage of AFL officials. The crucial
lesson of the great class battles of the
I930’s, which forged industrial union-
ism in this country, was that mere
militancy is not enough. Necessary is a
class-struggle leadership based on a
program of class independence from the
strikebreaking capitalist state and its
parties.®

War Crazy...

(continued from page I)
the country’s most modern army base
and held it for 12 hours. And today by
blowing up the last major bridge over
the Lempa, the insurgents have effec-
tively cut the country in half. This could
be the beginning of the end for the U.S.
puppet regime.

With things going badly in El
Salvador, early last year the CIA
stepped up its contra terrorist warfare
against the radical nationalist Sandinis-
ta regime in Nicaragua. In May CIA
chief William Casey told Congressmen
that his Nicaraguan contras would be in
Managua by New Year’s. Well, time’s
up. Nicaragua has become a roach
motel for the CIA’s terrorists: they
check in but they don’t check out.

The immediate danger for the revolu-
tionary masses is that the petty-bour-
geois nationalist leaders in both Nicara-

( "S

Spartacist League/
Spartacus Youth League
Public Offices

-MARXIST LITERATURE -

Bay Area

Frl 5 00-8 00 p m.. Sal. 3 00-6:00 p m
1634 Telegraph, 3rd Floor (near 17th Street)
Oakland. California Phone (415) 835-1535

Chicago

Tues 5 30-9:00 p m , Sal 2 00-5 30 p m
523 S Plymouth Court, 3rd Floor
Chicago. Illinois Phone (312) 427-0003

New York City

Tues 6 00-9 00 p m , Sat 12 00-4 00 p m
41 Warren St. (one block below
Chambers St near Church St.)

New York, N Y Phone (212) 267-1025

Trotskyist League
of Canada

Toronto

Sat 1 00-5 00 p m

299 Queen St W , Suite 502

Toronto, Ontario Phone: (416) 593-4138

v J

gua and El Salvador are anxious to
conciliate U.S. imperialism. The Sandi-
nistas are making more and more
concessions to the bourgeois fifth
column, the contras from within, and
the State Department. The Salvadoran
FDR wants a “negotiated solution” with
the kill-crazy U.S. puppet rulers. But
Reagan isn’t letting them sell out. He
wants them dead.

To overthrow the Sandinistas in
Nicaragua and suppress the leftist in-
surgents in El Salvador, Reagan is faced
with sending in tens of thousands of
U.S. combat troops. This would risk a
popular explosion within the United
States where memories of Vietnam — a
long, losing, dirty war in some far-off
land — remain very much alive. But that
doesn’t mean the U.S. imperialists won’t
go in anyway.

Dr. Strangelove’s
First-Strike Plans

Reagan campaigned for the presi-
dency on a program to restore military
“superiority" over the Soviet Union, a
codeword for first-strike capability.
This aim is openly stated by Colin Gray,
now an “arms control” adviser to the
Pentagon and State Department, in a
notorious article entitled. “Victory Is
Possible" (Foreign Policy. Summer
1980). Gray and his fellow Pentagon
strategists are planning to decapitate the
Soviet leadership:

"Thus, ihe United Stales should be able
to destroy key leadership cadres, their
means of communication, and some of
the instruments of domestic control. . . .
If the Moscow bureaucracy could
be eliminated, damaged, or isolated,
the USSR might disintegrate into
anarchy. ..."

Hitler, too, believed that the Soviet
Union would collapse at the first blow
...and remember what happened to
him. Facing almost total isolation from
the rest of the country, the people of
Leningrad held out for three years

against the Nazi siege. And some of the
survivors marched into Berlin as the
Fuhrer committed suicide in his bunker.

The world of Reagan’s first-strike
strategists is the world of Dr. Strange-
love and General Jack D. Ripper. All
these plans assume pinpoint accuracy
for ICBMs travelling thousands of miles
while leaving and re-entering the earth’s
atmosphere. Yet they have never been
tested over the North Pole, the course
they would have to take to reach the
USSR. The notion of a surgical first-
strike is insane. If Reagan really wants
to wipe out the Soviet Union, he might
put all his $ I -trillion-plus missiles in
Iowa and explode them, because in
three or four days Moscow and Lenin-
grad would be gone from the
aftereffects.

The only thing preventing U.S.
imperialism from carrying out its mad
first-strike plans is fear of the Soviet
second strike. The peoples of the world

should be very thankful for those SS 18s
and SS20s. At the same time, the
Kremlin Stalinists disarm the world
working class politically by preaching
the illusion of “detente" and “peaceful
coexistence” with imperialist militar-
ism. The Soviet bureaucrats hope that if
only Reagan is replaced by Mondale or
some other Democrat, detente will
bloom again. But anti-Sovietism has
been a bipartisan policy for U.S.
imperialism ever since 1917. Remember
Harry Truman who A-bombed Hiroshi-
ma and Nagasaki to intimidate the
Soviet Union. And John F. Kennedy
who was ready to destroy the world
during the Cuba missile crisis. And
Jimmy Carter who first declared Cold
War II when the Red Army intervened
against the Islamic feudalists in Afghan-
istan. It’s not the man, it’s the class. The
world working class must take power
from the war-crazy capitalists before it’s
too late — and time is running out.®

Sponsored by the Partisan Defense Committee

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Houston Person & Etta Jones

Wednesday, February 1, 8 p.m. to 2 a.m.
5832 Georgia Avenue, N.W.

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10

WORKERS VANGUARD

Western Press Admits It

Soviets Mop Up CIA's Afghan Cutthroats

Copyright © 1983 by The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission.

The New York Times

Monday, 26 December 1983

4 Years of Afghan Battle:
No Vietnam for Moscow

By DREW MIDDLETON

We reprint at right an article from the
26 December 1983 New York Times
where the Times' military writer and
dimwit Drew Middleton publicly ad-
mits what has been known in the
corridors of the Pentagon for some
time: the Soviet Army has won in
Afghanistan, effectively mopping up or
isolating the CIA-backed tribalist
bands. In an earlier article (New York
Times , 4 December 1983) Middleton
reported that American and British
intelligence sources believe “the Rus-
sians, with the Afghan Army’s help, can
police the country with one division,
about 10,000 men.” The remaining 90
percent of the Soviet forces are reputed-
ly “being trained”! This is a bitter pill for
the U.S. imperialists to swallow, after
several years of funneling millions of
dollars of machine gunsand antiaircraft
missiles to Afghan mullahs via Wash-
ington’s Egyptian, Pakistani and “Red"
Chinese allies.

For the last four years the Western
press has been inundated with the most
blatant lies on Afghanistan fabricated in
the disinformation mills of Langley.
Virginia. Bloodthirsty tribesmen who
skin Communist teachers alive for the
“crime” of teaching little girls to read
and write are passed off as “freedom
fighters." Reams of copy are produced
on alleged Soviet “yellow rain" chemical
warfare for which there is not the
slightest shred of scientific evidence.
Meanwhile, there has been barely a
mention of the fact that the Afghan-
Pakistam border areas where the
American-financed and armed guerril-
las operate have since 1980 become "the
biggest supplier of heroin to the United
States and the rest of the world” (New
York Times , 30 June 1983). Previously
the main source of heroin was the so-

called "golden triangle" in Southeast
Asia, until victorious revolution in In-
dochina drove theClA’s privatearmy of
drug-trafficking Meo tribesmen out of
Laos and into Merced, California.

For four years we have been reading
dispatches from New Delhi quoting
"well-informed sources” reporting thou-
sands of Soviet soldiers killed. Now the
most authoritative imperialist mouth-
piece reveals that these were a pack of
lies. So what is their conclusion? A
Times (I January) editorial on “Big
Brother’s War" calls on the U.S. to
provide more sophisticated weapons to
their ineffective mercenaries, raising the
provocative (and desperate) suggestion
of airdrops inside Afghanistan. The
Pentagon points to Soviet air bases in
Afghanistan to justify a naval adventure
in the Persian Gulf.

Four years ago, most of the left
(including many who fraudulently
claimed to be Trotskyists) joined the
imperialist chorus against the “Soviet
invasion" of "poor little Afghanistan."
The international Spartacist tendency,
however, greeted Soviet intervention
against the imperialist-backed feudal
reactionaries with the headline “Hail
Red Army in Afghanistan!" At the
height of Jimmy Carter’s anti-Soviet
"human rights” hysteria we demanded:
“ Extend social gains of the October
Revolution to Afghan peoples!" Soviet
intervention in Afghanistan, even
though undertaken for defensive pur-
poses, has meant land for peasants,
education for youth, a chance for
women to emerge from the centuries-old
oppression and enforced exclusion from
social life symbolized by the veil.
Decidedly, as we wrote four years ago,
“the liberation of the Afghan masses has
begun!”

Four years ago this week two Soviet
motorized rifle divisions crossed from
Soviet Central Asia into northern Af-
ghanistan. Kabul, the capital, had al-
ready been seized by an airborne divi-
sion. The Soviet intervention in Af-
ghanistan had begun.

Western correspondents
Military are barred from Afghani-
Analysis stan. A balance sheet at
the end of four years must
rely on the reports of
European and other intelligence serv-
ices, the claims of the rebels fighting
the Soviet-backed Government and oc-
casional admissions in Soviet military
publications.

The most significant conclusion that
can be drawn from these sources is
that, whatever else it is, Afghanistan is
not the Russians’ Vietnam. The Soviet
Union faces many military and politi-
cal problems in the country, but none
are of a magnitude to suggest that the
Russians face military defeat or politi-
cal turbulence.

Militarily, the Soviet Union has made
what intelligence analysts in the
United States and in NATO capitals re-
gard as important strategic gains.

As Henry Bradsher says in "Afghani-
stan and the Soviet Union,” a publica-
tion of Duke University, the threat,
real or imaginary, of the establishment
of an anti-Communist, Islamic country
on the borders of the Soviet Union's
Moslem republics in Soviet Central
Asia made the Russians move. The re-
sult, analysts say, is an important
strategic and political gain for Mos-
cow.

A Soviet Eye on the Gulf

From the military standpoint, Soviet
gains are even more impressive, mili-
tary and diplomatic analysts agree.
The Soviet Air Force has taken over
and expanded the military air bases at
Kandahar, Shindand, Farah, Kabul,
Bagram, Jalalabad and Herat. Soviet
reconnaissance aircraft and bombers,
consequently, can fly over the Persian
Gulf and the Arabian Sea at will and
monitor American and other Western
naval operations in those areas.

A senior NATO officer said he re-
garded this "expansion of the Soviet air
reach” as Moscow’s most important
military gain. In a crisis, he said, Saudi
Arabia and other Persian Gulf coun-
tries might make air bases available to
Western air power but, he emphasized,
"the Russians are there now.” Only
Oman, he predicted, would have the
courage to provide bases in a crisis.

Analysts think that from the Krem-
lin’s viewpoint the most important re-
sult of the occupation may be the clos-
ing of Wakhan, the panhandle of north-
east Afghanistan that borders on
China. Not only has the frontier been
closed and heavily fortified, but the in-
digenous inhabitants of the valley have
also been moved and settlers from
Soviet Central Asia have moved in to
take over their lands.

Sign of Rebel Weakness

Symptomatic of the extent of Soviet
control is that neither the expansion of
the air bases nor the clearance of the
Wakhan corridor has encountered the
bitter resistance that insurgent state-
ments issued in Islamabad and New
Delhi might lead analysts to expect.

In fact, one insurgent leader ac-
knowledged in an interview that an at-
tack on the Kandahar base, which he
had scouted, was well beyond the re-
sources of any one of the insurgent
groups or, in the unlikely event that
they acted in concert, “all of them.”

Soviet ground and air strength in Af-
ghanistan is estimated at 110,000 to
120,000 troops. Army units are rotated
every six months. The units now de-
ployed are mainly from the Russian
and Baltic republics. Earlier in the oc-
cupation, the Soviet high command had
what analysts describe as disciplinary
problems with Moslem troops brought
from the Soviet Union’s Islamic repub-
lics into an Islamic country.

Western analysts agree that only
about 12,000 to 15,000 Soviet troops are
fighting Afghan resistance and that of
these only 500 to 700 are involved in
daily operations. This minimal use of
Soviet military power can be attributed
to the ubiquity and effectiveness of air
power in the form of fighter-bombers
and helicopter gunships and to the will-
ingness of the reconstituted Afghan
Army to carry out ground operations
against the insurgents.

That army has suffered from casual-
ties and defections. But, analysts re-
port, it is still in being, stiffened by offi-
cers and noncommissioned officers
trained by the Russians and provided
with modem weapons.

The Soviet Unit That Fights

The most active Soviet force is the
201st Motor Rifle Division, which has
brigades at Jalalabad, Bagram and
Kandahar and independent companies
at Ghazni, Kunduz and Faizabad. The
Jalalabad bngade was called out re-
cently to liquidate an insurgent force
that had taken but could not hold a post
at Torkham in the Khyber Pass.

What are described by insurgents as
major Soviet operations seldom in-
volve more than 5,000 to 6,000 troops of
the 201st.

Western analysts put Soviet losses at
about 1,000 a year from all causes,
ranging from enemy fire through dis-
ease to poisoning from the local moon-
shine

The failure of promised Western
arms and equipment to reach the insur-
gents through Pakistan is one reason
for the insurgents’ weakness. A second
is the failure of the movements to unite
in battle. Some of the movements are
Islamic fundamentalists who look to
Teheran and Ayatollah Ruhollah Kho-
meini for leadership. Others depend on
the West for political and military sup-
port.

These differences are worsened by
longstanding tribal feuds.

An American expert on the country
and the Soviet occupation took a pessi-
mistic view of prospects for the rebels.

The insurgents, he said, do not now
have, and have little prospect of receiv-
ing, the sort of weapons, antiaircraft
and antitank missiles, that they need to
curb Russian aircraft and armor But,
he added, "even if they get them, the
Soviets will increase their efforts and
their numbers.”

"We got tired of Vietnam,” he said.
“The Russians are not going to get
tired of Afghanistan. It’s too close to
them and too close to the Indian Ocean.
They’ll stay ”

Lochon/Gamma

Soviet forces at Kabul airport, December 1979. Spartacists hailed Red Army
intervention against Islamic fanatic counterrevolutionaries.

SPARTACIST LEAGUE LOCAL DIRECTORY

National Office

Box 1377, GPO
New York. NY 10116
(212) 732-7860

Ann Arbor

C/O SYL

P O Box 8364

Ann Arbor, Ml 48107

Atlanta

Box 4012
Atlanta, GA 30302

Berkeley/Oakland

P O Box 32552
Oakland, CA 94604
(415) 835-1535

Boston

Box 840, Central Station
Cambridge. MA 02139
(617) 492-3928

Chicago

Box 6441 Mam P O
Chicago, IL 60680
(312) 427-0003

Cleveland

Box 91954

Cleveland, OH 44101
(216) 621-5138

Norfolk

PO Box 1972
Main P O
Norlolk. VA 23501

Detroit

Box 32717
Detroit. Ml 48232
(313) 961-1680

San Francisco

Box 5712

San Francisco. CA 94101
(415) 863-6963

Los Angeles

Box 29574
Los Feliz Station
Los Angeles. CA 90029
(213) 663-1216

Washington, D.C.

P O Box 75073
Washington, D C 20013
(202) 636-3537

Madison

C/O SYL. Box 2074
Madison. Wl 53701

TROTSKYIST
LEAGUE OF
CANADA

New York

Box 444

Canal Street Station
New York. NY 10013
(212) 267-1025

Toronto

Box 7198, Station A
Toronto. Ontario M5W 1X8
(416) 593-4138

6 JANUARY 1984

11

WORKERS VANGUARD

SL/SYL Vindicated

Moonies Forced to
Retract Deadly Libel

Being god is supposed to mean never
having to say you're sorry. So it is rare
indeed when a self-appointed messiah
like "Lord of the Second Advent" Sun
Myung Moon makes a public apology
to the very forces he has identified as
“Satan.” Yet with the simple statement.
“We no longer charge that the Sparta-
cist League/Spartacus Youth League
provoked violence on that day.” the
Moonies' Washington Times (26 De-
cember 1983) was forced to eat its libel-
ous words against the SL and the La-
bor/Black Mobilization which stopped
the Ku Klux Klan on 27 November 1982
(see SL press release on page 6). The

Washington Times retraction is not only
a victory for the Spartacist League, but
for all the participants of the powerful
mass mobilization of 5.000 which put a
stop to the K Ian's plans to march in the
nation's capital.

The Moonie libel fits the pattern of
falsely branding socialists and other po-
litical opponents of government policy
as violent terrorists ("Moonie Libel
That Kills," W'KNo.332. 1 7 June 1983).
The Reagamtes recognize only two
categories of opposition: wimpy college
professors who write an occasional
letter to the New York Times, or . .ter-
rorists. Our victory cuts across this mo-

dus operandi of the witchhunters of
Cold War II. In the forefront of this
fight against the new McCarthyism with
a drawn gun. the SL has also initiated a
suit against the FBI's ominous new Do-
mestic Security/Terrorism Guidelines.

In reaching a settlement agreement,
our bottom line in the negotiations
between the lawyers was that the
Washington Times publicly retract its
charge that the SL/SYL provoked
violence on November 27. They reiected
our initial letter for publication which
sets out the political context: key
statements on Marxism vs. terrorism
and on the cop riot on November 27

Lane/Newsweek

Sun Myung Moon: “I will conquer
and subjugate the world."

near the reformist diversion rally (see
“What the Moonies Refused to Print."
page 7).

We secured this important victory
against a group widely known and
feared for its vindictive use of lawsuits
against its opponents. With Moon’s
seemingly bottomless reservoir of mon-
ey. multinational corporate interests,
batteries of lawyers and connections in
high places, the Moonies have become
infamous, and regarded as making the
courts a battlefield of harassment and
intimidation in their holy war.

Why did the Moonie god apologize to
the Marxist "Satan”? First of all. their
article was a pack of lies. The thousands
who were there on the spot knew it.
Nearly all of black Washington knew
what happened on November 27. That is
why the Moonie lawyers used an archaic
law1 to lorce the case out of Washington.
D.C. to New York City. Even the cops
have said that the SL did not provoke
violence (see “FBI Director’s Testimony
Exposes Moonie Libel," page 7).

We knew we had the truth on our side.
But we also knew how little the truth can
matter in court, especially in libel cases.
Our legal counsel was Jonathan Lubell,
Spartacist League general counsel
Rachel W’olkenstein. and the firm of
Tigar and Buffone as local counsel in
Washington, D C. Lubell is one of the
most experienced lawyers in the country
in dealing with libel suits. Our lawyers
understood the importance of fighting
this dangerous libel when the press is
used to set up political opponents of the
government As Jonathan Lubell said,
“I am particularly pleased that we were
able to correct a falsehood which
involves political issues and govern-
mental activities, which are the core
concerns of the First Amendment."

The Moonies understood that, if they
pursued this case, they were in for a hell
of a fight We had top legal counsel and
private investigators. Our lawyers had
begun the process of "discovery.” to
subpoena the documents and those
responsible for putting the libelous
article together. We hit them where they
live— in their attempt to gain respecta-
bility and political influence through the
Washington limes. Our own press was
exposing the Moonies’ sinister opera-
tion. and they have a lot to hide. And we
had launched a broad-based campaign
that was reaching out to a wide spec-
trum ol Moon’s many enemies, includ-
ing parents (see “Moonies Against Our
C hildren.” page 8)

Importantly, the Moonies and their
continued on page 6

Moonie Press’s Retraction

Letters

^ £f)c 1# a$(jiit$toit (Times

WASHINGTON DC mm**m*.*Z5 &SB 25 Cdlll

The Labor-Black

Mobilization march story

Editor’s note: On Nov. 30, 1982,
The Washington Times ran a story
on the Nov. 27, 1982 anti-KKK dem-
onstration in Washington, D.C. The
letter published below describes
the activities and position of the
Fvartacist League-Spartacus

uth League in regard to its dem-
onstration. We no longer charge
that the Spartacist League-
Spartacus Youth League provoked
the violence on that day.

The Spartacist League (SL) and
the Spartacus Youth League (SYL)
initiated the Labor-Black Mobiliza-
tion to “Stop the KKK” in Washing-
ton, D.C. on Nov. 27, 1982. The
Labor-Black Mobilization was built
through the participation of orga-
nized labor — over 70 union locals,
officials, and executive boards en-
dorsed. A permit for the rally at
Constitution and First Avenues,
near the Capitol Building and the
beginning of the Klan’s route of the
march, was secured from the ap-
propriate police authorities on Nov.
22. During the next four days, the
SLand the SYL posted thousands of
placards and distributed hundreds
of thousands of leaflets announcing
the Labor-Black Mobilization rally.

The Labor-Black Mobilization
rally began at about 9:30 a m on
Nov. 27 and continued until about
12:40 p.m., engaging the participa-
tion of 5,000, predominantly blacks

and trade unionists, who listened to
speeches and took part in militant
chanting. A monitor squad, includ-
ing several members each from the
Laborers, AFSCME, Teamsters,
and Transit Unions, as well as 10
International Longshoremen Asso-
ciation members from Norfolk and
union supporters of the SL, had
been formed to maintain an orderly
and controlled demonstration.

For approximately one-and-one-
half hours, the demonstrators were
face to face with the police who had
lined the Constitution Ave. side of
the rally site. At 12:40 it was
learned that the Klan would not
march and, as the police withdrew,
the demonstrators spontaneously
entered Constitution Ave. pro-
claiming. “We stopped the Klan!”
Protesters rushed to the top of Capi-
tol Hill and then wheeled around
and headed toward Pennsylvania
Ave. and Lafayette Park, the Klan’s
intended destination. Thousands
streamed up what was to have been
the KKK march route, stopped traf-
fic, and exchanged victory salutes
with drivers.

Prior to and at the time the Labor-
Black Mobilization demonstrators
entered Lafayette Park, on the op-
posite side of the Park police oper-
ations were in progress with police
using tear gas against others who
had assembled near Lafayette Park.
The Labor-Black Mobilization dem-

onstrators were directed by our
monitors to the center of Lafayette
Park. A brief rally was held to as-
sert the absence of the Klan. After
this rally the monitors successfully,
peacefully, and in an orderly man-
ner led the demonstrators away
from the police and tear gassing
and out of the park, without inci-
dent. Many hundreds of protestors
then attended a victory party at the
Bellvue Hotel in the Capitol area.

What happened on Nov. 27 was
that the Klan did not march. The
media — with the notable exception
of the black press — portrayed the
anti-Klan demonstration as wide-
spread violence and looting. But it
was only The Washington Times
that named the SL and the SYL as
provocateurs of violence against
the police.

We believe that through the mili-
tant presence of the Labor-Black
Mobilization the Klan was stopped.
Neither the SL, the SYL nor any
other component of our mass
Labor-Black Mobilization demon-
stration sought, participated in, or
condoned any violence against po-
lice.

JAMES M. ROBERTSON

National Chairman

The Spartacist League
EMILY TURNBULL

National Secretary

Spartacus Youth League
Washington

12

6 JANUARY 1984

WORKERS VANGUARD .

No. 346 mm 20 January 1984

Reagan to Poor:

“Let Them Starve!”

Dividends are rising— black people
are starving. As the capitalists cele-
brate I9S4 with toasts to their high
profits, the soup lines grow longer and
workers are dumped from their jobs in
the heart of industrial America.
Hunger, a gnawing fact of life for the
poor, has become an open joke from
Wall Street to the White House. and —
equally cynically — a buzzword in the
election speeches of the Democratic

windbags. The anti-Soviet war budget,
based on political consensus by both
parties, continues to take the ax to
blacks, workers, minorities.

Not too long ago the U S. capitalists
claimed to rule in the interests of “all
the people.” Observable hunger was
embarrassing for them. As James P
Cannon said at the time of the
Communist hunger march in 1931.
hunger shows "the inability ol the

richest imperialist power to provide
the necessities of life to the producers
of that wealth." Even Richard Nixon
was heard to say that there was
something wrong, something unnat-
ural about hunger in America There
was lots of talk of reforms and even a
“war on poverty.” But not now. They
don’t have to bother. It was only the
emergence of the powerful industrial
union movement which changed the

political style of the two capitalist
parties from unabashed preachers
of capitalism-and-damn-its-victims to
the big-promises demagogy which has
been popular since the 1930s. Now
with the union movement being
strangled by the giveback bureaucrats,
the defeat of PA I CO and Greyhound,
the capitalists don’t even have to
pretend to give a damn about hunger.

Poverty is. after all. not their
problem. Unemployment’’ That’s just
blacks and workers. So the U S. has an
infant mortality rate like a “Third
World" country? The ruling class’s
babies are in no danger. Half the adult
black population is looking for work.
And black teenagers don’t have a
chance. The U S. bourgeoisie in-
creasingly accepts and promotes a
permanent black underclass. Racial
continued on page 13

Reagan’s Puppet Army Cracking

AP

Spectacular New Year's victory: Leftist guerrillas blow up last major bridge over the Lempa (left),
cutting the country in half. Combat-hardened rebel units (right) have puppet army on the run.

While fireworks exploded across the
country in a New Year’s celebration,
forces of the leftist Farabundo Marti
National I iberation Eront (EMI N)
easily routed government troops de-
fending the Cuscatlan bridge and
blasted the quarter-mile-long structure
into the l.empa River The destruction
of the last suspension bridge to the
eastern lour provinces cuts the country
in two. further protecting the rebel-
dominated East from government at-
tack I his was the second major military
deleat lor the U S puppet regime in less
than 72 hours. On December 30 a
second guerrilla arms had overrun the
fourth largest military base. I I Paraiso.
only 37 miles north of the capital. San
Salvador. After holding the U.S -
designed base lor 12 hours the guerrillas
withdrew, leaving the base in ruins

The leftist insurgents are on a roll,
and they had better keep rolling now to
a decisive military victory before Rea-
gan and his bloody colonels have time to
regroup. Over the past four months an
uninterrupted series ol EMI N victories
m the field and the accelerating disinte-
gration of the government army has
made the collapse ol the puppet regime
in San Sab ador an immediate possibili-
ty Even the Kissinger commission
report admits “Given the increasing
damage — both physical and political-
being inflicted on the economy and
Government ol I I Salvador by the
guerrillas, who are maintaining their
strength, a collapse is not inconceiv-
able" (A cu York Times. 12 January )

I he worst thing the rebels could do now
would be to stop, using the latest
victories to push lor a "negotiated

solution." i.e.. a coalition government
with a section of the murderous oli-
garchy. Pushing the puppet regime to
the brink ol defeat and then pulling back
would embolden U.S. imperialism and
encourage direct military intervention
to stave oil the looming catastrophe.
Now is the time to strike! On to San
Salvador!

In the wake ol these dramatic devel-
opments. Vietnam War criminal Henry
Kissinger’s commission on Central
America endorsed the Pentagon request
lor $400 million in military aid o\er the
next two years, triple the current figure.
But no amount ot money is going to
rev i\e a beaten army. and the additional
lunds will do little more than fatten the
Swiss bank accounts of some Salvado-
ran colonels and death squad honchos.
We only hope that these sadistic killers

do not escape to enjoy Washington's
blood money.

All the phony talk about stopping the
death squads is just so much public
posturing. And the real aim of the
Kissinger report is as a ploy in American
domestic politics, namely, to blame
Congressional liberals for losing the
“war against Communism" in El Sal-
vador il only they voted enough money
for effective "counterinsurgency”; if
only they stopped talking about "human
rights conditionality."

The Kissinger commission report ol
course echoes the Reagan line that
behind the popular revolutionary up-
heavals m Central America is "Soviet
expansionism": "The Soviet-Cuban

thrust to make Central America part
of their geostrategic challenge is what
continued on page 15

Cambodian People Now Have a Future

"u^Mailgrairi

i* !

PRESIDENT HENG SAMRIN
PHNOM PENH

PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF KAMPUCHEA

GREETINGS ON FIFTH ANNIVERSARY OF LIBERATION OF KAMPUCHEAN
PEOPLE I ROM BARBAROUS POL POT REGIME. HAIL INTERNATIONALIST
ASSISTANCE OF VIETNAM THAT SAVED MILLIONS FROM GENOCIDE AND
LAID BASIS FOR ECONOMIC RECON STRUCT I ON --KAMPUCHEAN PEOPLE NOW
HAVE FUTURE. FORWARD TO FINAL DEFEAT OF REACTIONARY REMNANTS
OF POL POT/SON SANN/SI HANOUK CLIQUES ARMED AND FUNDED BY CHINA
AND U.S. IMPERIALISM. HAIL HEROIC PERSEVERANCE OF INDOCHINESE
WORKING PEOPLE, INSPIRATION TO REVOLUTIONARIES IN BELLY OF
IMPERIALIST BEAST.

FOR THE INTERNATIONAL SPARTAC1ST TENDENCY

SUSAN ADAMS

NATIONAL CHAIRMAN

LICUE TROTSKYSTE DE FRANCE

JIM ROBERTSON
NATIONAL CHAIRMAN
SPARTACIST LEAGUE/U.S.

WV Photo

Cable sent for January 7 anniversary of Vietnam's ousting of genocidal
Pol Pot government in Kampuchea (left). On September 27, international
Spartacist tendency held eight demonstrations to protest murderous Pol
Pot gang retaining seat in UN. Photo (above) shows protest at UN
headquarters in New York City.

Letter

On the AIDS Witchhunt

Cleveland. Ohio
Nov. 29. 1983

Comrades:

Consistent with Lenin’s dictum that revolutionaries
must be “tribunes of the people” Workers Vanguard
has historically done exemplary work As a regular
reader for a number of years now I am grateful for this.
But for almost two years WV has failed to comment on
a serious and worthy topic. I refer to the politics of the
Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS).

The hard-won democratic rights of the gay minority,
tenuous and partial at the best of times, are threatened
by the ugliest reaction over the AIDS epidemic. The
capitalist media is freely distributing gross dis-
information about AIDS In the same sentence mass
publications simultaneously decry and promote
“AIDS hysteria." Newpapers report that before long
millions of gays will have AIDS. (The press subtly fails
here to convey a sense of loss.) Many people believe
that only homosexuals can catch AIDS and/or that it
is easily transmitted Gay organizations’ complaints
that the rabidly anti-homosexual Reagan administra-
tion is playing politics with the Center for Disease
Control are never thoroughly investigated.

And the difficulties in getting accurate information
about AIDS are not reserved only for the masses.
There are reports of scientific information being
suppressed even at high levels. Dr. Maria Teas, a
researcher at the Harvard School of Public Health had
to go to England’s Lancet for publication of her
African Swine Fever Virus hypothesis, which some
consider to be the only coherent hypothesis yet to
explain AIDS in Haitians. Meanwhile acres of
newsprint are devoted to promoting AIDS hysteria.

Some examples —

New York City embalmers had to be ordered by
special legislation to stop refusing AIDS corpses.

Legislation in New York State is now pending to
force the closure of gay bath houses and “back room"
bars.

WORKBRS VANGUARD

Marxist Working-Class Biweekly
of the Spartacist League of the U.S.

EDITOR Jan Norden
PRODUCTION MANAGER Noah Wilner
CIRCULATION MANAGER Darlene Kamiura
EOITORIAL BOARD Jon Brule. Charles Burroughs.

George Foster, Liz Gordon, James Robertson, Reuben Samuels,
Joseph Seymour, Mar|orie Stamberg
(Closing editor (or No 346 Liz Gordon)

Workers Vanguard (USPS 098-770) published biweekly, skipping
an issue in August and a week in Oecember, by the Spartacist
Publishing Co 41 Warren Street, New York, NY 10007
Telephone 732-7862 (Editorial), 732-7861 (Business) Address
all correspondence to 8ox 1377. GPO, New York, NY 10116
Oomestic subscriptions $5 00/24 issues Second-class postage
paid at New York. NY POSTMASTER Send address changes to
Workers Vanguard, Box 1377. GPO. New York, NY 10116
Opinions expressed in signed articles or letters do not
necessarily express the editorial viewpoint

No. 346 20 January 1984

San Francisco cops, no doubt thrilled to add to the
reaction, have handled AIDS suspects (read gays) with
surgical masks and gloves.

A San Francisco TV production, ironically
attempting to demystify AIDS, hit a snag when the
camera crew refused to enter the same room with an
AIDS patient. The crew wrongfully feared contagion
by casual contact

The AIDS scare adds fuel to the “normal’’
homophobic prejudices promoted in bourgeois socie-
ty. In Cleveland last July, for example, an avowed
Nazi, Joseph Spisak, was convicted of a spree of race
murders. But the prosecutor told the jury Spisak killed
not because he is a Nazi, or even because he is a
psychopath, but because he is homosexual! The
message was clear: one way or another, homosexuals
kill.

Epidemiologically, AIDS will continue to spread
from New York and other large cities and then
penetrate even rural areas. The disease will soon claim
a significant percentage of its victims from the
heterosexual majority. The inevitable suffering and
grief, when combined with the earlier illusions about
AIDS as a “gay disease”, bode hell for homosexuals.
They understand this. Job firings, forced closings of
bars and baths, evictions and vigilante attacks are now
creating a lot of concern among gays. Indeed the social
consequences of the AIDS juggernaut may render the
disease itself a secondary concern Clearly gays face a
reaction of great potential ferocity.

AIDS has been front page news for Time,
Newsweek , the Village Voice etc. It has been the
subject of countless network television reports and is
now virtually a household word And yet it seems that
WV has nothing to say about it! How a paper written
and published in Lower Manhattan can have missed
the AIDS scare of ’83 is, to say the least, puzzling.

I recall your coverage of the Spartacist League's
fusion with the Red Flag Union after helping them
break from ihe gay life-stylist morass. The many fine
articles in WV, Young Spartacus and Women and
Revolution on the various aspects of the gay question
also come to mind. You certainly didn’t wait a couple
of years to respond to Anita Bryant, So why no AIDS
coverage? Even Sam Marcy’s reformist rag, Workers
World, has covered AIDS extensively,

The AIDS scare provides an important and
fascinating conjunction of medicine, sexuality and
politics. It is over exactly such issues that the Spartacist
League has made a name for itself with its trenchant
Marxist analysis. I for one can only hope that the
belatedness over AIDS is accidental (a venial sin) and
does not represent a retreat on the gay question.

Homosexuals and their organizations have often
been early targets for smashing in times of growing
reaction But this inevitably foreshadows the bourgeoi-
sie’s agenda for the rest of the oppressed, the left and
the proletariat. Democratic rights are indivisible!

Fraternally.

D. F. Moore

WV replies: We thank D.F. Moore for his informative
letter, and direct his attention to the article. “Reaction-

ary Bigots Breed Anti-Gay Hysteria — AIDS and the
‘Mortal Sin’ Scam" in the new issue of Women and
Revolution (No. 27. Winter 1983-84). We agree with
him on the importance of covering this question,
particularly because the right wing has exploited the
AIDS epidemic to fan the flames of anti-homosexual
hysteria, superstition and bigotry in this deeply
homophobic society.

But we emphatically reject Moore’s suggestion that
the SL may have made "a retreat on the gay question"
since our 1977 fusion with the Red Flag Union, a
leftward-breaking gay rights group which was won to
T rotskyism. The delay in our AIDS coverage was due
to nothing more remarkable than repeated, frustrating
delays in producing the new W&R (nine months
between the last two issues), resulting mainly from the
demands of our important legal defense campaigns,
with the W&R editor being heavily involved in the
publicity work around these cases. We invite D.F.
Moore to consider in particular our forthright defense
of the "North American Man/Boy Love Association"
against the vengeful and reactionary “age-of-consent"
crusade (see “Moral Majority Witchhunt Against Gay
Activists— Defend NAMBLA!" WV No. 321, 14
January 1983). The SL has stood virtually alone in our
defense of NAMBLA while everybody from “leftists”
to gay groups have ducked this taboo subject,
abandoning the weakest of a weak oppressed group to
be slandered and targeted as "kidnappers” and “child
molesters.”

We were interested to see that the New York Times
has finally come out with a position, in the form of a
major feature article. “For Victims of AIDS, Support
in a Lonely Siege," which ran as the lead story in the
Metro section on 5 December 1983. This sympathetic
account of how a small group of courageous gay
activists are fighting against the prejudice surrounding
AIDS victims, and sheer documentation of the horror
stories on the treatment of AIDS sufferers, performs a
useful service. ■

Women and Revolution No. 27

Winter 1983-84

• AIDS and the
"Mortal Sin" Scam

• Under the Terror
In Sri Lanka

• Women and
Night Work
in Sri Lanka

• Turkey:

Prison Mouse

lor Women, Kurds

• "Pro-Llle"

Gestapo Raids
Morgentaler
Abortion Clinics

• Defend, Complete,
Extend
Nicaragua
Revolution!

Single issue 50C
Subscription: $2/4 issues

Make checks payable/ mail to

Spartacisl Publishing Co Box 1377 GPO. New York. NY 10116

2

WORKERS VANGUARD

Defend the Scoundrel!

Village Voice's Cockbum Up a Creek

Alexander
Cockburn poses
for Village Voice.

1982.

MEHttHWEAR

black
Coordination or
Camouflage?

The Trouble witti
POCKETS

The Case for
CUFFS

Why Men Need
Showing Training

Utefectomy

VefcropMa

|VOICEr

Alexander Cockburn. flashy left-
wing gadfly of the Village l one, is the
target of a vicious campaign charging
that his anti-Zionist writing is bought
and paid tor by PLO or other Arab
money. The media piranhas smelled
blood when they read in the Boston
Phoenix (10 January) that last year
Cockburn got a $ 10.000 fellowship from
a scholarly foundation, the Institute ol
Arab Studies, to write a book on the
Israeli invasion ol Lebanon. It looks like
Cockburn may lose his job. Hiscditorat
the Voice. David Schneiderman (whom
Cockburn has described aptly as a
“morally indifferent P.T. Barnum"),
pronounced before even talking to
Cockburn that “It’s just wrong” and
“very, very serious” (New York Times ,
12 January). By January 16 the Voice
had Cockburn "suspended indefinitely"
without pay.

But in a move calculated to contrast
to the mean-minded little McCarthys at
the rad-lib Voice , the big-bourgeois
Wall Street Journal decided to keep
Cockburn on in his once-a-month op-ed
column. In a breezy and calculated
editorial ( 13 January) titled “Alexflap.”
the Journal describes the incident as
“lairly innocuous.” The only trouble
with Cockburn. they say. is every
editor’s problem with every writer
deadlines; they observe that “Interesting
columnists come, like Cromwell, warts
and all.” These rabidly pro-Israeli
superhawks observe that “even Arabs
should enjoy freedom of speech." Thus
the Voice makes the Wall Street Journal
look like civil libertarians Meanwhile,
according to the New York Times (17
January). Cockburn may be getting a
job offer from Victor Navasky, editor of
the Nation. Navasky has written persua-
sively, regarding the McCarthy period,
that the wrong way to deal with
witchhunting is to separate oneself from
those to one’s left; his offer to Cockburn
puts that understanding into action.

This is a witchhunt meant to drive
Cockburn out of print. Of course he has
the right to take money from an Arab
foundation to write a book. Who is the
Institute of Arab Studies supposed to
get to write on the Near East? Norman
Podhoretz? William Safire? When that
army of Zionist journalists gels money
there’s no big stink. The premise of the
"purity” of the American press is
laughable. They cohabit snugly with the
CIA’s “ministry of disinformation." and
besides, there’s not a newspaperman in
this country who wouldn’t hold out his
hand if someone offered him $10,000 to
write a book.

So we don’t like what’s happening to
Cockburn If he is driven off the pages of
major U.S. newspapers it will be a
witchhunters’ victory and a defeat for.
among other things, freedom of the
press. And we will miss him. Not only

because wc find his columns interesting,
venomously bright; not only because he
is a political enemy worth aiming
polemics at We think it’s just fine when
we lay bare his political core hiding his
conciliation behind his snotty wit. Bui
only we should be allowed to cream
Cockburn. not this bunch of liberal
imperialists.

Cockburn wants to maintain bour-
geois respectability, at least as an enfant
terrible , while trying to approximate
political reality, however craven ly. Now
the Oxford grad is finding out that anti-
Zionism is no kind of respectable in
America.

The Americanization of Alex

So, Cockburn. how does it feel to be
the contemporary equivalent of a Jew in
tsarist Russia? Tor a man who spends so
much effort cultivating social ties to the
U.S ruling class, you really stepped into
it this time. Can you have thought there
wasn’t an American Establishment, the
likes ol the one you are well aware of in
your own land"1 It causes sadness to have
to tell an adult man that the U.S. has a
ruling class too. And that Jews figure in
it (and even the German Jews of the
Times share this fixation on Israel). The
modern “black hundreds” over at
Commentary suggest you drink the
blood of little Jewish children. How
does it feel knowing the lights burn late
at the Israeli Mission because of
Alexander Cockburn?

Cockburn defensively told the press
he’d be giving the money back because
he hasn't had time to write the book (too
bad — we would have liked to read it).
And he observed that he couldn’t be
bribed to be anti-Zionist because he
already stood against the Zionists, (This
line of reasoning cut no ice with the
same people who thought it was brilliant
when Norman Thomas used it as a
defense of CIA payoffs.) “My views on
the Middle East are extremely well
known," said Cockburn. Indeed that is
why he is under fire as a purported agent
of Arab propaganda.

Edward Said, Columbia professor
and member of a PLO leading body, is
chairman of the Institute of Arab
Studies Said, a widely respected schol-
ar. defended the Institute's academic
purposes. For Zionist groups like the
“Amencan-lsraeli Public Affairs Com-
mittee " (AIPAC) of the B’nai B’rith
Anti-Defamation League, he noted,
“anything with the word ’Arab’ in it is
therefore propagandistic” (New York
Times. 1 2 January). This is. he said, “not
only totally unfounded, it’s racist." The
American Zionist mainstream cannot
help but reflect the outright racism of
Menachem Begin who describes Arabs
as “beasts who walk on two legs." The
AIPAC has slanderously targeted as

some kind of anti-Jewish "activist” even
the most moderate (read sellout) Arab
scholars. Their treatment ol Walid
Khalidi. for instance, was so preposter-
ous that even liberal Zionist Anthony
Lewis, in a column titled "Protocols of
Palestine.” objected, “Joe McCarthy
could not have produced a nastier
distortion" (New York Times. 16
January).

No one who knows Cockburn's
record can really suspect him of being a
kept propagandist for Arab/Islamic
causes. When the Soviet army inter-
vened against the feudalist mullahs in
Afghanistan, all the sheiks of Araby
joined Begin and Jimmy Carter to
embrace the Afghan “freedom fighters."
(So did the anti-Soviet U.S. “left.") But
not Cockburn who with typical bour-
geois hauteur wrote:

“We all have to go one day. but pray
God let it not be over Afghanistan An
unspeakable country filled with un-
speakable people, sheepshaggers and
smugglers, who have furnished in their
leisure hours some of the worst arts and
crafts ever to penetrate the occidental
world

“I yield to none in my sympathy to those
prostrate beneath the Russian jackboot,
but if ever a country deserved rape it’s
Afghanistan. Nothing but mountains
filled with barbarous ethnics with views
as medieval as their muskets, and
unspeakably cruel, too."

— Village Voice. 21 January 1980

The attack on Cockburn isn’t about
the alleged ethics of journalists. Cock-
burn’s real crime for self-censoring
hypocrites is that no journalist with a
name and some following in the U.S. is
allowed to be a thorn in Israel’s side.
During the Israeli invasion of Lebanon
it is one thing for Workers Vanguard to
headline: "Reagan, Begin & Hitler " It’s
quite another matter when prominent
journalist Alexander Cockburn makes
the same point in nearly the same
language: the Israeli "blitzkrieg" and
“war criminals."

The Enemies He Makes

If a man is to be judged partly by the
enemies he makes, it must be said that
Cockburn has many of the right ones.
He is particularly hated by the big
liberal press for his weekly “Press Clips"
in the Voice where he exposes and
sometimes humiliates the establishment
press as capitalist lackeys and hacks (It
is here that one reads of the “musical
chairs" played by the New York Times

and the State Department Richard
Burt [Republican] and Leslie Gelb
[Democrat] work the national security
chair for either State or the Times.
depending which party is in office.) The
Times doesn't conceal its glee at Cock-
burn’s troubles as it observes that his
column "frequently includes lacerating
comments about the ethical standards
of other journalists."

The New York Times ought to know
Cockburn caught them a lew years ago
in a sensational fake. A lengthy Times
feature titled “In the Land of the Khmer
Rouge" (20 December 1981) by one
Christopher Jones carried the blurb
"An American reporter takes a journey
into the Cambodian jungle, where the
shadowy Pol Pot leads his peasant army
in savage guerrilla warfare against the
Vietnamese invaders.” The ideological
dolts at the Times published Jones' piece
of pulp fiction, where he claimed he even
spotted Pol Pot.

It was Cockburn who spotted the
hoax and printed the last paragraph of
the Times article — along with the
paragraph from Andre Malraux’s novel
set in Cambodia (La Vote Royale . 1923)
from which the paragraph was plagia-
rized. Stung, the Times sent three of its
honchos to dig up Jones in Calpe.
Spain, where he admitted he’d written
his eyewitness travelogue of Cambodia
from his parents’ seafront apartment in
Spam On 23 February 1982 the Times'
pathetic lead editorial, "A Lie in the
Times." cried over their “nightmare of
the newsroom" and begged forgiveness.
For his part. Cockburn noted that at the
Times, only "the small lie is exposed."
while the “greater lies persist unchal-
lenged,” on the cover-up of Central
American death squads for instance. No
wonder the pundits at the New York
Times want to get Cockburn.

Back to the Bogs, Boyo?

Cockburn’s holier-than-thou snot-
tiness is now going to cost him. But
it is important to see that the style
reflects a fundamental political concilia-
tionism Despite his decidedly left-wing
literary output, he is personally a man of
distinct and self-cultivated aristocratic
sensibility For instance, in all this Arab
money business, he never bothered to
tell his bosses. Why? Not because he was
hiding it. but because typically Alex
continued on page 14

The Arming of the Proletariat

A strike is inconceivable without propa-
ganda and without agitation. It is also
inconceivable without pickets who. when
they can, use persuasion, but when obliged,
use force. The strike is the most elementary
form of the class struggle which always
combines, in varying proportions, “ideo-
logical" methods with physical methods.

The struggle against Fascism is basically a
TROTSK \ political struggle which needs a militia just
as the strike needs pickets. Basically, the picket is the embryo of the workers’ militia.
He who thinks of renouncing "physical" struggle must renounce all struggle, for the
spirit does not live without flesh.

— Leon Trotsky. Whither France? ( 1 934)

WORKERS VANGUARD

3

The Battle of Warrington: 4,000 printers and their supporters take on
scabherding cops, 29 November 1983.

LONDON — For more than lour years
Margaret Thatcher has with malicious
glee ground her heel in the face of the
British working class. I hen last month it
looked like the Iron Lady had gone too
lar and was about to get her comeup-
pance. When the printers union (Na-
tional Graphical Association [NGA]),
one ol the strongest and most militant in
the country, stood up to the union-
bashing Tebbit Act. every class-
conscious worker in Britain knew here
was an opportunity to break the hated
Lory government just as the miners had
brought down Heath (the last lory
government) in 1974 At one point 4.000
printers and their supporters battled
police in the small Midlands town of
Warrington But the Trades Union
Congress (TUC) bureaucracy — includ-
ing the so-called “lefts” — stabbed the
embattled printers in the back in one of
the most flagrant acts of class treason
within living memory. Lenin’s definition
of the reformist labour bureaucracy as
the agents of the capitalist class within
the workers movement can hardly be
clearer than in Britain today.

What began as a localised closed-
shop dispute between the NGA and
Eddie Shah’s Messenger Group, a
small-time, scab free-sheet publisher in
the Manchester area, escalated into a
major showdown between the Tories
and the trade-union movement Having
already imposed close to £1 million in
fines and court costs and sequestered the
union’s entire assets under the Tebbit
Act’s provisions against mass picketing
and secondary action [refusal to handle
scab goods], the courts then outlawed
the 24-hour national strike called by the
NGA for December 14 This provoca-
tion should have been answered with an
immediate general strike call by the
TUC to defend the printers and smash
the anti-union laws. The NGA tops may

Iron Lady Thatcher gets her kicks
savaging the working class.

have intended their call for a 24-hour
stoppage to be a token protest action to
blow off steam, but many workers in the
printing industry' and elsewhere saw it as
a springboard to wider action against
Tory rule.

This widespread sentiment at the base
was reflected in the TUC Employment
Policy and Organisation Committee
vote on December 13 narrowly endors-
ing the NGA action. In an unprecedent-

4

ed move TUC general secretary Len
Murray publicly repudiated this demo-
cratic decision and denounced any
support to the NGA, including the
tepid, toothless "left"-inspired resolu-
tion conveying a “sympathetic and
supportive attitude." Seizing the oppor-
tunity to pass the buck, the NGA tops
called off even their one-day protest
action pending TUC approval. A
divided TUC General Council con-
voked by Murray put the imprimatur on
his backstabbing. Murray is now natu-
rally and rightly hated by millions of
militant workers as an open class
traitor. But the TUC “lefts" are no more
willing to confront the Tories’ union-
busting offensive For example. Arthur
Scargill. head of the powerful National
Union of Miners, while condemning
Murray, has taken no action in support
of the printers or against the anti-union
laws. Clearly the NGA could not take on
the government on its ow n, but from the
beginning its leadership refused to force
the issue upon the TUC by mobilising
the necessary strike action

While the Fleet Street press showered
the “courageous" Murray with kudos,
in Westminster Iron Lady Thatcher
purred, "The T UC believes in upholding
the law.” Indeed, it wasn’t Parliament or
the queen’s assent which made the
1 ebbit/Prior anti-union legislation “the
law.” but the treachery of Murray and
his TUC cohorts The open endorse-
ment of the Tories’ union-busting laws
by the right wing of the I abour Party/
TUC bureaucracy and the do-nothing
acquiescence of the “lefts" have shaken
and angered countless worker militants.
They want to fight. These worker
militants can and must be broken from
the entire tradition of Labourite refor-
mism in both its right and left forms.
There can be no proletarian socialist
revolution in Britain without splitting
the Labour Party and winning the mass
of active, class-conscious workers as the
communist vanguard

Labour/TUC "New Realism":
Cold War Austerity

The TUC’s backstabbing of the
printers was a practical lesson in the
“new realism" consolidated at its Black-
pool conference last September. The
conference was an orgy of Cold War

anti-Sovietism centered around Rea-
gan’s Korean Air Lines 007 provocation
and a witchhunting attack on "left"
miners leader Arthur Scargill for his
correct denunciation of Polish Solidar-
nosc as “anti-socialist." Acting as
Murray’s hatchetmen against Scargill
were none other than Gerry Healy’s
Workers Revolutionary Party. Not long
ago the Healyites served as messengers
for Islamic fanatic dictator of Libya,
Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi. Now
they’re serving the cause of Pope John
Paul Wojtyla and his friends in NATO
and the CIA headquarters at Langley.
Virginia. The Blackpool TUC repre-
sented a concerted drive by the NATO/
CIA-loving right wing to pull the trade-
union movement into line behind the
imperialist preparations for anti-Soviet
nuclear war As we said at the time:

“That means toeing the line for
Thatchcrite austerity, domestic fist of
the drive to war It means crawling to
Tebbit. accepting the Tory attacks on
jobs, wages, living standards and social
services "

— Spartacist/ /in tain.

September 19X3

The attack on Scargill was a warning
to any who might step out of line with
Cold War anti-Sovietism, in particular
as the question of Solidarnosc is the
touchstone for social-democratic anti-
Sovietism Neither the Labourite “lefts"
nor the Communist Party supporters
like Scottish miners leader Mick McGa-
hey and the Engineers’ Ken Gill stood
up to the Cold W ar witchhunters. Not
surprisingly when it came to the crunch
with the NGA over I ebbit. they bowed
to the Cold War rights again, going no
further than words of support despite
their votes against Murray in the
General Council

Under the impact of the renewed anti-
Sovict war drive led by U.S. imperial-
ism. a distorted and uneven class line
has been cleaved between “little Eng-
land" reformists around Tony Benn
and the NATO/Cl A -connected Atlanti-
cists in the Labour Party. This has
already led to a major right split in 19X1.
producing the Social Democratic Party
(SDP). I he remaining Cold War right,
both in the parliamentary Labour Party
and TUC. denounced NGA “violence"
and “lawbrcaking" from the outset and
openly took on the task of being direct

Britain's No. 1 class traitor: TUC
general secretary Len Murray.

agents for Thatcher’s anti-union laws
The “left" Campaign group of l abour
MPs mumbled words of "active" sup-
port for any NGA industrial action —
particularly when it became clear there
was not likely to beany. And what of the
Labour Party's "dynamic" new leader,
Neil Kinnock? He sat on his hands for
three weeks, only to finally announce: “I
have no intention of condoning breaks
in the law and no intention of being a
drill sergeant for divisive and ruinous
Tory legislation" (London Times. 14
December 19X3). At the first hint of
class struggle the W'elsh windbag col-
lapses. The Labour Party tops not only
betray the workers' struggles against the
Tories, but when in power themselves
act to suppress labour militancy and
increase the rate of exploitation for a
sclerotic British capitalism. Remember
the Callaghan/ Healey “social contract"
under the last Labour government!

The Cold Warriors like Denis Healey
and Roy Hattersley, fifth columnists for
the SPD. should be driven out of the
Labour Party. Not that we have any
illusions in the Bennite “left." On the
contrary, wc follow Lenin in seeking to
put those with socialist pretensions,
such as the Bennites. in power in the
mass reformist party and in the govern-
ment while unceasingly warning, at
every step, that they are traitors and will
betray — thus to win over their worker-
militant followers as these hard truths
are brought home.

Bring Down Thatcher Through
Class Struggle!

While the “left" bureaucrats’ hangers-
on were alibiing for surrender in the
NGA battle, the Spartacist League/
Britain was intervening with a revolu-
tionary perspective. Outside the critical
December 14 meeting of the TUC
General Executive, our call to "Sack
Murray" was taken up by numerous
other militants. Against the NGA tops’
attempt to pass the buck to Murray, we
called for the occupation of Fleet Street
(center of British newspaper industry) to
seize the bosses' assets as ransom against
the courts’ theft of the union's assets and
lor a national, all-union print strike to
defeat the union-busting attack And
against the TUC "left’s” do-nothing
"sympathy and support" platitudes, we
said: “TUC: Back NGA all the way —
General strike now to smash Tory anti-
union laws!"

Clearly needed is a general strike
against the Tories’ anti-labour offen-
sive. But how to get it? Through
widening actions, a strike in defense ol
the NGA could build to a decisive
confrontation with the Iron Lady In the
context of an all-union print strike, joint
strike committees of the NGA and other
printing-trades unions would be crucial
in winning the strike. Moreover, by
overcoming the deeply entrenched
craft ist prejudices and structure of the
printing trades, the basis would be laid
for an industry-wide union forged
through class-struggle unity. The de-
mand for solid support action must be
placed in particular upon those unions

WORKERS VANGUARD

Six Die in West Berlin Deportation Jail

Stop the Racist Roundups!

WEST BERLIN — Six young foreign
detainees — three Tamils, a Tunisian
long-time resident of France and two
Palestinians — were killed horribly
here on New Year’s Eve in the
notorious Augustaplatz prison, an old
Wehrmacht barracks converted into a
deportation jail. First reports said they
burned to death. Two days later,
autopsies revealed death from the
cyanide fumes of the burning mat-
tresses. A survivor has testified that he
saw a cop throw fireworks into the cell.
Police sources now state that 35
minutes elapsed between the outbreak
of the fire and the arrival of the fire
department.

An investigation was immediately
launched against the survivors for
arson and prison mutiny. As the facts
leaked out, an investigation on charges
of manslaughter was begun against
prison wardens who had locked the
cell, ostensibly in fear of a “general
uprising.”

West German jails are notorious.
We do not forget the fate of Ulrike
Meinhof (supposedly a “suicide") and
other members of the so-called
“Baader-Meinhof gang” of German
leftists. But the central element in the
brutal random killing of the Augusta-
platz Six was racism, with a substrate
of hard cold economics.

In West Germany today there are an
estimated 4.6 million foreign workers.

of which the largest component comes
from Turkey. Particularly after the
coldblooded targeting of Turkish
leftist Kemal Altun, hounded to death
last August 30 by the deportation
terror, the policy of German capital
and itsarmed thugs is horribly clear. In
their campaign to slash the immigrant
work force, particularly resident for-
eign leftists, they have declared open
season on immigrants. German capi-
talism rakes in big profits from the
desperate millions of foreign workers
fleeing economic hardship and vicious
regimes of rightist terror; when they
are no longer needed, the bourgeoisie’s
government, the “democratic” succes-
sor state to Auschwitz, obligingly
enforces laws which recall those of the
Nazis to deport them. Under
Schmidt's Social Democratic (SPD)
government more than 800.000 foreign
workers were deported from West
Germany, many of them to certain
torture and death at the hands of the
genocidal dictatorships they fled.

The hideous fiery death of the
Augustaplatz Six began according to
the prescribed racist routine. Rounded
up in the anti-immigrants dragnet, all
were illegally arrested— on the street,
in subway stations, in the railway

station while buying a ticket— when
they were unable to produce papers for
an ID check. Two were simply visitors
traveling through West Berlin; several
had valid papers.

These daily manhunts are con-
ducted by the AGA, the hated spe-
cial police unit built by Christian
Democrat (CDU) strongman and
West Berlin interior minister Lummer.
The arrested are routinely refused
access to interpreters and lawyers; thus
they are denied information on their
legal right to demand asylum. Lawyers
often learn only by accident of their
detention; how many become “missing
persons” to be deported quietly is
impossible to determine.

Seven of the survivors of the New
Year’s Eve massacre have now been
deported in secret, their identities
and the destinations of all but one
unknown. Another 36 shall be deport-
ed soon; there will soon be no
witnesses left of the grisly atrocity.

The only “crime” of the many
Tamils. Palestinians, Turksand Kurds
who travel through West Berlin is their
attempt to flee mass terror in their
homelands. West Berlin,. stronghold of
deportation terror under Lummer and
his bonapartist cops, is now under

CDU rule. But for years under the
SPD as well. West Germany has
supplied Turkey (NATO’s southern
flank) with tanks and arms, poured
military aid into Israel, played pay-
master to bloody J.R. Jayewardene in
Sri Lanka. For Kurdish and Turkish
workers and leftists, for Palestinian
and Tamil refugees in West Germany,
this smooth cooperation among capi-
talist butchers means an iron vise of
terror, torture and murder.

On January 2 a demonstration of
about 650 here witnessed an outpour-
ing of just outrage. The contingent of
about 250 Tamils chanted “At home
they burn our houses, here they burn
our bodies!” and took up the chants of
the German Trotskyists, the Trotzkis-
tische Liga Deutschlands; “Free all
deportation prisoners now! No depor-
tations— deportation is murder! Politi-
cal asylum for Tamils! German imper-
ialism. paymaster for J R .'s genocide!”

The working class must fight for its
most oppressed sectors. The labor
movement must act to stop the
deportations and win full citizenship
rights for foreign workers and their
families. Asylum for refugees from
rightist terror regimes! Avenge the
Augustaplatz Six! To oust Lummer is
not enough! Stop the manhunt against
foreign workers! Down with the
Gestapo methods of Lummer’s racist
police! Down with the AGA!

whose leaders claim to stand with the
NGA — like blacking of [refusing to
handle] print shipments by the National
Union of Railwaymen and mass pickets
(above all. at Eddie Shah’s scab opera-
tion in Warrington) built through strike
action with Scargill's miners, themselves
in dispute with the National Coal Board
bosses. Across the board, from the
miners to the railwaymen to the Trans-
port & General Workers, the journalists'
union slapped with another Tebbit
injunction, the British Telecom phone
workers earlier hit with a court injunc-
tion. the British Leylands workers now
in dispute, what is needed is not token
“solidarity” or “moral support” but
solid industrial action Key to any
generalised confrontation with the
Tories/capitalists would be the struggle
to win over and integrate the vast army
ol unemployed, by fighting for jobs l or
all through worksharing on full pay.

The TUC’s betrayal of the printers
has encouraged the Lory union-bashing
offensive. Home secretary Leon Bright
put it plainly; “The closed shop is itself
however enforced, a flagrant and
fundamental denial of individual
liberties... not only morally wrong but
deeplv dangerous to the economy and
jobs” (London Times . I7 December
1983). Morality? I iberty? Deprived of
its former world dominance and coloni-
al empire, this rapacious ruling class
turns with mounting virulence against
the British working class. The only
liberty they are really interested in is to
uphold their class rule of exploitation
and oppression. The LUC tops seek
talks with the Thatcher government to
negotiate some crumbs so that Labour-
ite reformism does not become totally
discredited in the eyes of their disaffect-
ed and embittered ranks. For working-
class militants it is an urgent task to
defend the independence ol the trade
unions from the capitalist state. 1 hat
means defiance of the anti-union laws!
To hell with the government-inspired
closed-shop ballots! To heii with Mur-
ray's talks with the Tories!

Fake-Lefts; No Way Forward

Of all the groups to the left of the
Labour Party, the Communist Party
(CP) has by far the greatest influence in

the trade unions. Years of class collab-
oration in the name of "peaceful
coexistence” has resulted in the CP
being dominated today by Cold War
Eurocommunists. But Euros and pro-
Moscow Stalinists alike capitulate
before the Labourite traitors when it
comes to class struggle. Thus, despite its
significant weight in the Fleet Street
printing trades, the CP was virtually
invisible in this major confrontation
between labour and capital.

At the height of the crisis, in mid-
December prominent C'P trade-union
leader Ken Gill, a member of the TUC
General Council, spoke to a joint CP/
Labour Party gathering in London and
scarcely mentioned the NGA conflict!
When challenged by a Spartacist
spokesman. Gill (who is in the pro-
Moscow wing of the CP) replied that
there needed to be “ideological struggle”
in the TUC (!) belore there could be talk
of a general strike and claimed that
“unless the NGA engages in battle there
is little one can do to support ” At this
meeting another CP supporter, who is
deputy lather of the NGA chapel at the
Financial Times (equivalent to the Wall
Street Journal), while expressing “dis-
appointment” at calling off the 24-hour
stoppage and "disgust” at Murray's
backstabbing. concluded that unionists
should send resolutions to “get Murray
off the fence.” So here was the spectacle
ol one of the CP’s most important union
leaders claiming he could do nothing
and a leader of one of the NGA’s most
powerful chapels claiming there was
nothing to be doneexcept writingto l.en
Murray!

One of the few left groups which
raised the call for a general strike was
the centrist Workers Power. At the same
time, seeking to pressure the reformist
leaders it also demanded that;

"The Labour Party leadership must be
called lo account. Hundreds of resolu-
tions must be sent to the NEC [National
Executive Committee] demanding that
Kinnock. Hattersley & Co. retract all
their attacks on the NGA, and declare
their 1009? support, and that of the
whole party, for the NGA."

Good luck! While trying to put
comrades Kinnock and Hattersley on
the right track. Workers Power also
veered off to infantile rank-and-filism

and idiot adventurist gimmickry (e g.,
proposing to take on “armed police riot
squads... under the guise of football,
gymnastics and martial arts clubs”).
Like Tony Cliffs Socialist Workers
Party from whence it came. Workers
Power seeks to sk irt the issue of political
struggle against the trade-union bu-
reaucracy by pinning its hopes on a
“rank-and-file” movement with no
defined programmatic content.

Whither Britain?

On every front, at home and abroad,
the British bourgeoisie is on the offen-
sive against the hard-won gains of the

working class in a desperate attempt to
reverse the decline of British imperial-
ism. For this third-rate imperialist
power it means marching in lockstep
with Reagan's America in preparation
for war to overthrow the Soviet degen-
erated workers state, born of the
Bolshevik Revolution. And it means
destroying such gains as the trade-union
movement has made over the past half
century, forcing labour back to the pre-
World War I status of the notorious Taff
Vale decision Unions are to be con-
fined to narrow economic issues, at best.

Meanwhile, as one sector of industry
alter another undergoes devastation,
valuable skills of the proletariat are
thrown to the wind. The decades-long

decay of British capitalism has con-
demned large sections of the population
to permanent impoverishment. In the
summer of 1982 jobless youth, black
and white, burned down the slum
neighbourhoods of the bleak and
dilapidated cities.

The progressive rot of Britain com-
bined with the demonstrated impotence
of the Labourite bureaucracy to stop it
also create a fertile social/political
climate for the ominous growth of
fascism Thus, the struggle against the
anti-immigrant racialism directed at the
South Asian and West Indian commu-
nities is crucial to forging a revolution-

ary vanguard party of the now ethnical-
ly diverse British proletariat.

The flagrant betrayal of the printers
highlights the wretchedness and utter
bankruptcy of all wings of traditional
Labourite reformism. The right openly
accepts the dictates of Cold War
austerity, while the “lefts” no longer
offer believable reforms and fear any
struggle which might challenge the basis
of capitalist rule. The working class
acutely needs a new leadership which
can halt and reverse the Tory anti-union
offensive and carry the struggle forward
to socialist revolution, which would be
followed by some ambitious five-year
plans to make Britain a decent place to
live. ■

1974 miners
strike brought
down last Tory
government of
Edward Heath.

20 JANUARY 1984

5

Lauren & Ray...

(continued from page 16)

w ho came to court January 6 and post'd
for photographs outside the courtroom
(see photo, page 16) was Amalgamated
Transit Union Local 1225 president
Dave Mix-some of his local members
are themselves lacing felony charges for
defending their picket lines during the
recent bitter Greyhound strike.

The defense motion charges that
Lauren (formerly a Black Panther Party
member for ten years) and Ray were

Unionists Rally To Help

.SSrESSst

phZe7rskaWSthatkshe was at-

pit

reportedly still has her job
The rally was endorsed by
Jal unions and 24 Black, student
and civil rights groups.

JET magazine, 19 December 1983,
covers Mozee/Palmiero defense.

targeted because of their political views
and histories and their union activism.
Both members of the oppositional
caucus in the CWA. the Militant Action
Caucus. Ray and Lauren are avowed
socialists, well known in the union as
anti-racist class-struggle fighters, who
were picked out for victimization as part
of a concerted company attempt to
intimidate the strikers and break the
strike.

Funds Urgently Needed Now

Following a spirited march of 400 in
support of Mozee and Palmiero held in
Oakland last October 29. the PSDC is
continuing vigorous efforts to publicize
the case. Prior to the demonstration
185,000 leaflets were distributed; since
then nearly 50,000 WV supplements on
the case have been handed out at work
locations, on campuses, in black neigh-
borhoods. at bus barns and on the
Greyhound picket lines. The PSDC’s
demands have been endorsed by more
than 20 local unions and over 1 60 labor
officials, by minority student and civil
rights groups, community activists, a
variety of left-wing political spokesmen
and several prominent bourgeois politi-
cians. Thanks to the pressure generated
by this broad support, the D A. dropped
one of the charges in advance of the first
court appearance. Now the D. A.'s office
is stalling; meanwhile, the phone com-
pany is intervening hard in the unem-
ployment hearings to make sure Ray
and Lauren continue to be denied
unemployment compensation. The
phone company and their government
friends are hoping the active support
generated by the PSDC will dissipate
and the militants will run out of pa-
tience— and money.

The defense motion was filed
November 21. Then the prosecutor.
Deputy D A. Bill Kleeman, suddenly

the RACIST*.
' FRAME
N M0ZFE fi.
IUST r- r

WV Photo

Ray Palmiero and Lauren Mozee at
29 October 1983 defense rally in
Oakland.

backed out of the case. Kleeman, known
to have political aspirations, likes to
claim he supports the labor movement
( San Francisco Examiner. 28 October
1983); this case— with the impressive
labor backing for the defendants — was
looking like a political millstone for his
neck. The D A. now handling the case
has stalled and stonewalled: first flatly
refusing to submit a written answer to
the defense motion, then continuing this
posture at the January 6 hearing with
claims the motion, with its mammoth
documentation, is "insufficient" and
“without merit." The PSDC is mobiliz-
ing to once again fill the courtroom with
supporters of Ray and Lauren on
January 17.

In mid-December, the PSDC learned
that the phone company had quietly

transferred Michelle “Scab" Hansen to
a San Francisco phone office. This ploy
did not work out quite as they intended.
Workers there, after reading the WV
supplements on the case, w-cre outraged
that the racist scab was working in their
midst. A union steward took supple-
ments for every worker in the office and
sold 15 PSDC buttons to coworkers.
This militant told PSDCers what
happened next: one ol Hansen's fellow
managers, seeing workers engrossed in
reading the material, went to a second-
line boss and demanded the workers be
forbidden to read it. The second-line,
who is black, replied she couldn't tell
people what to read. One worker took a
supplement, underlined every reference
to Hansen— in yellow!— and threw it in
her face saying. “This is what people
think of you!" Except for Hansen's lone
manager buddy, the steward says, no
one in the office will talk to the racist
scab.

All defenders of unionism and black
people’s rights can be gratified by the
class solidarity shown by these phone
workers and other working people. But
PSDC spokesmen emphasize that the
vital defense effort is imperiled by
mounting financial costs. Thousands of
dollars have been spent on pursuing and
publicizing this case: Ray and Lauren
and the three teenagers dependent on
them have had practically no income
except the contributions raised by the
PSDC. While the CWA has paid some
legal expenses there continues to be
much additional costly activity to be
done. Many unions, rank-and-file un-
ionists and concerned individuals have
contributed generously, but the PSDC
has been forced to rely on additional
loans. WV appeals to our readers to
send urgently needed contributions to:
Phone Strikers Defense Committee.
Box 24152, Oakland. CA 94623. ■

Phone Strikers Singled Out for Prosecution

Excerpts from Defense Motion for
“Discovery” and Dismissal of Charges
Against Lauren Mozee and Ray Palmiero

MUNICIPAL COURT
OF CALIFORNIA.
COUNTY OF ALAMEDA
SAN LEANDRO-HAYWARD
JUDICIAL DISTRICT

PEOPLE OF THE STATE
OF CALIFORNIA,

Plaintiff,

v.

RAIMONDO GIUSEPPE
PALMIERO. et al..

Defendants.

NOTICE OF MOTION TO
DISMISS INDICTMENT
FOR DISCRIMINATORY
PROSECUTION AND
MO I ION FOR DISCOVERY
IN SUPPORT THEREOF

DECLARATION OF
ANNE FLOWER CUM1NGS

1. ANNE FLOWER CU MINGS,
declare:

...Defendants [Lauren Mozee and
Ray Palmiero] had been employees of
PT&T. were and are members of the
Communications Workers of America.
Defendants are an interracial couple
who live together in Oakland At the
time of the alleged offenses, they were
on strike. The strike lasted from
approximately August 8. 1983 until
August 29, 1983. The alleged offenses
allegedly occurred at or near the picket
line. The alleged victim was a non-

striking employee ol PT&T. The instant
case is strike-related.

The August 1983 strike was the first
significant and lengthy [strike] of the
Communications Workers of America
(CWA) against PT&T in California
since 1955. It was a bitter strike.
Management personnel, contractors
and suppliers, etc. regularly crossed
picket lines and engaged in assaultive
type conduct toward picketers as PT&T
attempted to insure that the strike inter-
rupted its business as little as possible.

Defendants MOZEE and PALM I L-
RO are members of the Militant Action
Caucus of the Communications Work-
ers of America. It is an organized group
of phone workers within the CWA who
seek to become the leadership of the
Union. It advocates that unions, in
particular the CWA. must represent the
interests of workers and that those
interests arc separate and distinct from,
and counterposed to those of the
companies. It espouses the belief that
the independent interests of workers
must have a political as well as an
economic expression in the form ol an
independent working class party.

Defendants, along with other mem-
bers of the Militant Action Caucus,
were among the most vocal and active
supporters of the strike. They sought to
mobilize the Union members to make
the strike effective and successful. There
is a history of harassment of Caucus
members by PT&T management for
their Union activities.

The defendants have filed a Motion to
Dismiss the instant criminal action on
the basis that the prosecution is the
result of discriminatory enforcement of
the laws... Defendants contend that
Alameda County law enforcement
officials sided with PT&l. its manage-
ment and its security officers during the
strike of August 1983. Defendants
contend that Alameda County law
enforcement officials had a policy of
investigating and prosecuting only
striking workers for allegedly commit-
ting assault type offenses; conversely.
Alameda County law enforcement
officials had a policy of not investigat-
ing or prosecuting PT&T personnel
for allegedly committing assault type
offenses —

No prosecution of any assault type
offense committed on a striker by PT&T
personnel (or those sympathetic to
PT&T during the strike) has been
initiated

No matter who called the police
(w hether PT&'l personnel or a striker),
the police responded to PT&T manage-
ment and/or security personnel first I
am informed and believe that this
procedure was jointly worked out
between Alameda County law enforce-
ment personnel and PT&T —

I am informed and believe that
Alameda County law enforcement
officials and PT&T management and
security personnel caused to be broad-
cast on local television new's a story
about the arrest of defendant PAL-
MIERO which included an old mug
shot of LAUREN MOZEF accompa-
nied by the statement that the police
were still looking lor this woman I am
informed and believe that at the time the
above information and photograph
were caused to be broadcast. Alameda
County law enforcement officials and
PT&T management and security per-

sonnel were aware that defendant
MOZEE was an employee of PT&T and
knew her address. 1 am informed and
believe that the actions taken to cause
said broadcast were done with the intent
to intimidate L All REN MOZEE and
CWA strikers in general from exercising
their right to picket and with the intent
to incite public opinion against the
CWA strike by portraying defendant
MOZEE as a violent criminal.

I am informed and believe that at the
time of defendant PALMIERO’ s arrest
by and defendant MOZEE's surrender
to Alameda County law enforcement
officials, said officials confiscated the
PT&T identification cards ol both
defendants on behalf of, at the instruc-
tion of. and with the authority of PT&T
management and security personnel.

I am informed and believe that the
strikers at San Leandro Directory
Assistance were largely minority women
and that they were the focus ol consis-
tent harassment by PT&T management
and those sympathetic to them and the
San Leandro Police Department These
minority strikers were conscious of
police hostility and antipathy to them
not only because they were strikers but
also because of their race and sex

I am informed and believe that law
enforcement officials were in constant
contact with PT&T management and
security before, during and after this
strike as part of the discriminatory
enforcement of the laws I am informed
and believe that PT&T has in its
possession or under its control the
records sought herein regarding meet-
ings. contacts, agreements, etc., between
PT&T and law enforcement officials of
Alameda County

Executed this 21st day of November.
1983. at San Francisco. California.

Anne Flower Comings

Declarant

6

WORKERS VANGUARD

“The Police Officers Were Acting As If They Were Management Security Officers...”

Excerpts from Phone Strikers’ Depositions

We publish here some excerpts from
the sw orn statements of Communica-
tions Workers of America (CWA)
members submitted in court November
21 as part of the defense motion that the
frame-up charges against Lauren Mozee
and Rax Palmiero be dismissed on the
grounds of " discriminator \ prosecu-
tion." The strikers' accounts constitute
the most powerful proof that the legal
victimization of Lauren and Ray was
undertaken as part of the vindictive
conspiracy between PT&.T management
and the capitalist state against telephone
workers and their right to strike. In
excerpting these documents for publica-
tion here, we have corrected obvious
typing errors.

CWA member Karen Lawrence

...On August 18. 1983. I witnessed
the arrest of one Communications
Workers of America picket. Annette
Robertson, by members of the San
Leandro Police Department.

Before Robertson was arrested, two
San L eandro Police officers were at the

picketing site A few minutes later.

two more San Leandro Police officers
arrived One of the recently arrived
officers asked another officer, “What's
happening here?”

The first San Leandro Police officer
replied, "We're going to get one of
them.”

...After a car passed through the
picket line, two members of the San
Leandro Police Department ran over to
Annette Robertson and one of them
said, "That’s it. You're under arrest."
One of the police officers arresting
Annette Robertson raised his right arm
in a motion that indicated he might
strike her. I yelled, "Don’t you hit that
woman on the head!” Annette Robert-
son was then pushed against the police
car and the officers kicked her in the
ankles to force her feet apart. Annette
Robertson is a small woman who weighs
approximately 100 pounds —

1 cannot recall the specific date, but to
the best of my recollection, during the
last week of the strike, a man who was
accompanying a strike-breaker bran-
dished a tire iron and a handgun in a
threatening manner to the picketers.
The man said. “I’ll blow this whole
picket line away.”

The San Leandro Police Department
was supplied with a description of that
man as well as the license number of the
car he drove. The officer who took the
report later informed me that the man
was neither interviewed nor arrested .

CWA member Trina Penn, a picket
captain during the strike

...On August24. 1983, Ray Palmiero
and Lauren Mozee arrived at the Pacific
Telephone and Telegraph office at 530
East Fourteenth Street, San Leandro.
Only a few minutes after their arrival,
three or four San Leandro Police
Department squad cars arrived at 530
East Fourteenth Street. There were at
least two police officers in each car. The
six to eight police officers reacted as if a
major crime was in progress. One police
officer removed the shotgun from the
rack inside the squad car. They were
obviously responding to a call from
Pacific Telephone and Telegraph
management —

CWA member Paul Costan

...On August 10, 1983.. . I was on
picket duty at 1661 Doolittle Drive. San
Leandro, California — At approxi-
mately 10:00 AM, a blue van from the
"Special T Messenger Service," a non-
union delivery service, was driven

through the picket line at a high rate of

speed I would estimate that the van

was going about 30 miles an hour.
Picketers had to scramble to avoid being
struck by the speeding van. One picket-
er. Wanda Rutland, was struck on the
head by the van's right-side rear-view

mirror About thirty minutes later.

the same van stopped behind a gate
inside company property. Everyone on
the picket line was paying careful
attention, because we were afraid the
van would try to crash the picket line
again. A company station wagon pulled
up and stopped next to the picket line.

We thought the company station wagon
would run interference for the van.
Then, without warning, the van drove
around the station wagon and crashed
through the picket line. It was as if the
driver of the van was aiming at the
picketers. Everyone tried to avoid
getting hit. I was running for cover, but
as the van squealed around the corner
onto Doolittle Drive at 25 to 30 miles an
hour, it hit my left foot. I spun around
and landed in a prone position —

Sometime around 10:30 AM, a group
of ten or more police officers arrived at
1661 Doolittle. There was nothing
happening on the picket line at the time,
but these police officers were dressed in
“riot gear” with visored helmets, full-
length batons and jumpsuits. Their
commanding officer conferred with
company security while the rest of the
police officers waited across the street.
Then the police officers approached the
picket line. Without any explanation to
us, they forced us off the picket line.
This allowed a convoy of strike-
breaking big-rig trucks to cross our
picket line. The police officers were
acting as if they were management
security officers

Later, when I recognized the severity
of my injuries. I contemplated making a
police report. But I was confined to my
bed for about a week. Then I heard that
a fellow Communications Workers of
America [member] had seen my picture
on an Oakland police officer’s motorcy-
cle. I also heard that a union worker was
threatened with the possibility of being
arrested for making a false police report
when she tried to report a similar
incident

CWA member Kathy Ikegami

[On August 10 in San Leandro], . . the
police officers approached the picket
line and each police officer physically
grabbed a picketer and removed him or
her from the line. I was grabbed around
the chest and held. There was no way
that we could lawfully picket. While the
police were holding us. a convoy of
strike-breaking "18-wheelers” crossed

the picket line.... Alter the convoy
passed through the picket line, the
company security personnel talked with
the police officers. The discussion was
very Iricndly. Both the police officers
and the company security personnel
were laughing

C WA member Steven Sandor John

[On August 17]... I went to the police
station on East 14th Street and ascer-
tained that Ray Palmiero was being
detained there. I then drove to the
operators’ picket line at 530 East 14th
Street and got several of the operators to

accompany me back to the police
station —

While the desk officer was speaking to
me, a young blond man in a suit walked
across the room behind the desk officer
and ostentatiously took my picture —

August 19, 1983, 1 was present in the

San Leandro Municipal Court

[Palmiero’s lawyer] Mr Simons re-
quested that Ray’s personal effects
taken two days earlier when he was
arrested by the police be returned. The
District Attorney responded that they
had to hold on to his possessions and
then something to the effect that the
police had confiscated a Communist
Party card belonging to Ray. In fact, the
items taken from Ray are listed in the
police report and do not include a
Communist Party card —

CWA member Tom Humphrey

...On August 16,. 1983, at
approximately 7:45 AM. I was on picket
duty in front of the Pacific Telephone
and Telegraph facilityat 30l4Chapman

Street, Oakland. California At that

time, Suzanne Fields, an employee of
Pacific Telephone and Telegraph, drove
up to the location where I was picketing.

I showed her my picket sign. She looked
straight at me and then drove into me.
hitting me in both kneecaps. She smiled
as she hit [me] with her car — Everett
Campbell, a Pacific Telephone and
Telegraph manager, witnessed theentire
incident. I asked him to call the police.
He refused to do so. I had to walk two
blocks on very sore legs to make a call to
the Oakland Police from a public
phone.

After my call, two Oakland Police
Department squad cars arrived. Three
Pacific Telephone and Telegraph securi-
ty cars also arrived. The Oakland Police
officers first started to go inside the
Pacific Telephone and Telegraph facili-
ty to talk with management personnel
before talking to me. I had to remind
them that I was the complainant in this
matter. Then the Oakland Police offi-
cers didn’t want to make a report of the
incident. They told me that they didn’t

have time. They said that these things
happen all the time during a strike. I had
to be very insistent before they would
write a report. They asked me if I
provoked the incident —

On August 18. 1983. the Communi-
cations Workers of America held a
march through downtown Oakland. We
were well organized and observed the
law. The Oakland Police Department
had a large number of officers observing
the parade. They were not escorting us.
They hung back and appeared to be
waiting for any outbreak of trouble. At
one point during the parade, a motorist

honked his horn in support of the
marchers. The Oakland Police officers
immediately took this man, who is
named Robbie Llamas, from his carand
took him to jail. This, as it turned out,
was the biggest disturbance of the
parade. And it was caused by the
Oakland Police Department.

In late August 1983, a date that I am
unable to specifically recall, I was at the
Communications Workers of America
Local Chapter 9415 at 1831 Park
Boulevard. Oakland, California. At that
time the local received a telephone call
from the picketers at the Pacific Tele-
phone and Telegraph Directory Assis-
tance facility. 530 East Fourteenth
Street, San Leandro. The picketers
called Local 9415 because they felt
intimidated by the San Leandro Police
Department. The picketers said they
were intimidated by a San Leandro
Police Department paddy wagon that
repeatedly drove in front of the Pacific
Telephone and Telegraph facility. We
had to dispatch three or four people
from Local 9415 to reassure the picket-
ers in San Leandro ■

Special Blues Benefit

for the Phone Strikers
Defense Committee

Stop the racist anti-labor frame-up of
Mozee and Palmiero!

Featuring

Peewee Crayton
Percy Mayfield

Sunday, February 19, 3 p.m.

At the National Association of
Letter Carriers, Branch 24
774 South Valencia
$5 donation Proceeds to the PSDC.

For more information:

(213) 663-1216 or 1217

LOS ANGELES

During last summer’s phone strike militant CWA pickets confront scabs at San Leandro in California Bay Area (left).
Notoriously brutal Los Angeles police bust phone strikers (right).

20 JANUARY 1984

7

From de Gaulle to Mitterrand...

UNPOPULAR FRONT

IN FRANCE

Aulnay-sous-Bois— Citroen auto workers on strike. May 1982. The working class is being forced to defend its jobs, its
living standards, the gains of a generation against Mitterrand's unpopular-front regime.

This is the conclusion of a two-part
article on Mitterrand's France. I he first
part, covering polit ical and economic de-
velopments under the preceding Gaull-
ist and Giscardian regimes, was pub-
lished in WV No. 339. 7 October I M3

PART TWO

"Mitterrand projected himself as
the President of plenty but has
become the President of penury "

— Henri Amoureux. historian
When Frangois Mitterrand was
elected the first Socialist president of the
Fifth French Republic in May 19X1. the
reformist lelt throughout the world
hailed this as a great victory. Anud a
capitalist world committed to economic
austerity and monetarism, the new
French popular front advocated what
the snide London Economist dubbed
"Keynesianism in one country." fhe
Mitterrand regime promised to pull
France out of the world economic
crisis — the worst since the Great De-
pression of the 1930s— through a purely
national policy of fiscal and monetary
expansion.

The utter impossibility of this pro-
gram did not take long to make itself
felt. At the dictate of international li-
nance capital, after a year in office the
Mitterrand popular front executed a U-
turn in economic policy and has since
imposed more severe austerity measures
than those of the previous bourgeois
Giscardian and Gaullist regimes! There
were 1.7 million unemployed when
Mitterrand took office: today there arc
over 2 million. And official government
forecasts project half a million more
unemployed by the end of 1984.

One effect of the disastrous failure of
the Mitterrand "experiment" has been
to drive the petty-bourgeois masses to
the right, creating the increasing danger
of bonapartism. At the same time, the
working class is being lorced to defend
Us jobs, its living standards, the social
gains of a generation against this
unpopular-front regime. In the fore-
front of such struggles have been the
foreign, predominantly North African,
workers, w ho have fewer attachments to
and illusions in French social democra-
cy. The Mitterrand popular front has

entered an explosive period which will
determine not only the luture of France
but perhaps all of Europe.

Mitterrand's Popular Front with
Gaullism

When the world economic downturn
hit France in 1979-80, the country had
already suffered under three years of
deflationary austerity (the Barre pro-
gram) coming after two years of world
slump The unemployment rate in 1979
of 6 percent was the highest in a
generation. A public opinion poll taken
at the end of 1980 showed that a
majority of those questioned thought
that inflation, employment, growth,
living standards, equality and interna-
tional competitiveness had all got worse
since the right-wing monetarist Ray-
mond Barre became prime minister in
1976. Almost all sections of French
society rejected the "neo-liberal" eco-

nomics of the Giscard/ Barre regime. In
the months leading up to the May 1981
election the economic conditions got
markedly worse and became the domi-
nant domestic issue in the campaign.

Mitterrand promised a veritable
Keynesian/social-democratic “econom-
ic miracle." If elected, he told the
French people, he would create 400.000
new jobs (half in the public sector),
reduce the workweek from 40 to 35
hours, increase state pensions and
family allowances by 50 percent, raise
the minimum wage b> 25 percent and
institute an additional fifth week of
annual summer vacation. Add to this an
ambitious nationalization program with
generous compensation and a major
rearmament drive. In particular. Mitter-
rand promised to beef up the force de
frappe (especially nuclear submarines)
and expand French arms exports to the
so-called Third World Integral to this
program was increased protectionism
under the slogan ol "reconquering the
domestic market."

I ike Mitterrand and the Communist
Marchais. the Gaullist candidate
Jacques Chirac attacked the Giscard/
Barre regime for its "wet liberalism" and
“complacency" toward the worsening
economic crisis He, too. promised to
stimulate the economy and reduce
unemployment with his own version of
Keynesian pump-priming, namely, big
tax cuts lor both businesses and individ-
uals I he Gaullist campaign appealed
especially to small and medium-sized
capitalists who resented the haughty
Giscard as the representative of high
finance and the multinational corpora-
tions More generally. Gaullism appeals
to the chauvinistic petty bourgeoisie of a
middle-rank imperialist country with
memories ol lost historic grandeur (the
Sun King, the Napoleonic empire).

I he pseudo- Trotskyists such as the
l.igue Communiste Rcvolutionnaire

(LCR) followers of Ernest Mandel/
Alam Krivine. Pierre Lambert’s Parti
Communiste Internationalisle (PCI)
and Arlette Laguiller’s Lutte Ouvrierc
(L.O) enthusiastically supported Mitter-
rand. The PCI proclaimed Mitterrand’s
10 May 1981 election success a "workers
victory" against the bourgeoisie.
Uniquely, the l.igue Trotskyste de
France (LTF). section of the interna-
tional Spartacist tendency, insisted that
Mitterrand was in fact tied to a section
of the French bourgeoisie, and not just
marginal elements like the Left Radicals
but centrally the Gaullists On the eve of
the second round the LTF wrote:

"What has Mitterrand promised which
creates such enthusiasm in our leftists ol
yesteryear'.’ lo lorm a popular-frontist
alliance with representatives of the
bourgeoisie (Left Radicals. Gaullists.
etc.) To reinforce the links of imperial-
ist France with the Atlantic Alliance
aimed at the USSR To make the
workers pay for the crisis of capitalism.
It will be the popular Iron! under the
colors of Gaullism!"

—"Giscard Never. Mitterrand
No!" WV No. 280.8 May 1981

The social-democratic and Gaullist
campaigns had a number of important
themes in common. Both attacked
Giscard/ Barre’s “neo-liberal" econom-
ics for sacrificing the French economy
to the interests ol foreign capital. Both
denounced Giscard for being too
detente-minded and soil toward Soviet
"aggression" (e.g . Afghanistan). The
Mitterrand forces assiduously courted
the so-called "lelt” Gaullists. In fact.
Mitterrand probably paid greater hom-
age to the General’s memory than did
Chirac, declaring: " I his is an appeal to
national resistance against the fatality of
the crisis, as General de Gaulle appealed
in Ins day in other circumstances that
were difficult for the nation" (quoted in
Denis MacShane. Mitterrand 4 Politi-
cal Odyssey [ 1983))

These appeals to Gaullist nationalism

Social
democrat
Franpois
Mitterrand with
Gaullist

Jacques Chirac
(right): Two
taces of French
nationalism.

8

WORKERS VANGUARD

were not without their effect. When
Chirac was eliminated in the first round,
he said that while he personally would
support Giscard. his followers were tree
to vote their consciences. This was
universally taken as backhanded sup-
port to Mitterrand. And after he lost.
Giscard accused his lormer prime
minister of “premeditated treachery."
Fully 15 percent ol those who voted lor
the Gaullist on the first round switched
to the social democrat on the second, the
decisive margin which put Mitterrand
into the Elysee.

One “left" Gaullist and one ex-
Gaullist, both advocates of traditional
dirigisme, were given key economic
ministries: Michel .lobert as minister ol
trade and Jacques Delors as minister ol
finance. As Pompidou's foreign minis-
ter in the early 1970s. Jobert had gained
international notoriety as the most
vocal — indeed, insulting — critic of Hen-
ry Kissinger’s abortive "Year of Eu-
rope." More so than the maverick
lobert. the symbiosis between Mitter-
rand's social democracy and Gaullism is
personified by Jacques Delors. a former
senior Bank of France official. Delors in
1969-72 was chief economic adviser to
the “liberal" Gaullist regime of Chaban-
Delmas. where he advocated (unsuc-
cessfully) a “social contract” between
the unions, employers and government
to divide up the economic pie. Alter
Chahan-Delmas was dumped by Pom-
pidou as too "radical." Delors switched
his allegiance to Mitterrand's Socialists
as the best party to realize his v ision of a
liberal corporatist state

The response of the bourgeoisie in
France and its imperialist allies to
Mitterrand's election was genuinely
contradictory On the one hand, it was
generally leared that his economic
program would produce an inflationary
explosion with unpredictable but clearly
dangerous consequences. On the mor-
row of the election the conservative
London Economist (16 May 19k I)
predicted:

“The almost certain result ol this Mr
Mitterrand’s economic policy would he
an explosion ol inflation that would
drive the Iranc through the floorboards
ol (he European Monetary System and
lead to a Right of capital, which Mr
Mitterrand's left-wing advisers would
then blame on a ‘bankers’ ramp' and
would want to cure by rc-crccting a
protectionist fence around France."
Much of the French bourgeoisie
agreed with this prognosis. 10 May 1981
began an uninterrupted capital flight. In
the first two weeks after Mitterrand's
election F ranee lost a quarter of its total
foreign exchange reserves. The term
“High! of capital" is no mere metaphor
either. In late 1981 the main customs
officials union estimated that since the
new government had come to power
57.5 billion in cash, gold and other
valuables had been smuggled out of the
country, most of it in private planes!
The combined effect of the world
downturn and apprehension over Mit-
terrand’s policies caused French capital
to go on strike. Private-sector invest-
ment fell about 15 percent in 1981-82.
Shades of Allende's Chile!

But the attitude of the bourgeoisie,
both within Franceand without, toward
Mitterrand's election was by no means
entirely negative. As we have seen, a
substantial section of French capital,
represented by the Gaullists. opposed
Giscard/ Barre’s "neo-liberalism" and
lavored a return to more nationalistic.
etatiste policies. Secondly. Mitterrand's
strident anti-Sovietism (in contrast to
Giscard) won him the lavor of imperial-
ist opinion, especially in Reagan's
Washington. The American Time mag-
azine (9 November 1981) titled an article
on the new French president. “Hawk in
Socialist Feathers Mitterrand backs a
strong military in tandem with U.S.
policy." And. indeed, the French social
democrat has been the leading recruiter
for Cold War II in NATO Europe. For
example, early last year in Bonn he
denounced pacifism in Germany (when
has a French president ever done that
before?!) and urged the Bundestag to

support the scheduled deployment of
the U.S. Pershing 2 missiles. Of course.
Mitterrand's France is not a puppet of
Reagan’s America (occasional appear-
ances to the contrary notwithstanding).
It is a middle-rank imperialist country
seeking to carve out its own sphere of
influence (e g . in the Near East).

Especially outside France. Mitter-
rand's election was seen as a v ictory for
pro-NATO social democracy over the
(more or less) pro-Moscow Communist
Party It was also viewed as a victory for
parliamentary reformism over militant
class struggle it la May '68 and. on a
lesser scale. I orraine in 1979. I he same
Economist editorial which criticized
Mitterand’s economic program none-
theless welcomed the strengthening of
parliamentary illusions among the
French working class: “The clear gain is
that, after 23 years under right-of-centre
governments. France has shown that it
can cross over to the lei t by the ballot-

box rather than by violence in the
streets."

On balance the initial attitude of the
bourgeoisie to the Mitterrand "experi-
ment" was one of guarded toleration.
If — a big if — the Mitterrand popular
Iron! did not seriously weaken France’s
international competitiveness, produc-
ing a run on the franc, then perhaps it
would become a force of stability for
the French bourgeois order, as had
the German social democrats under
Brandt/Schmidt

From “Keynesianism in
One Country"...

A few months alter Mitterrand took
office. Business Week (24 August 1981)
observed. "French fiscal and monetary
policy is switching to a last expansion-
ary track." Indeed, it was. I he budget
lor 1982 called lor increases in spending
lor government loans and other subsi-
dies to business of 54 percent, lor
housing ol 34 percent, lor public works
ol 30 percent and for the military of 18
percent Overall, from 1980 to 1982 the
budget deficit tripled, from 31 to 95
billion Irancs.

Where the Mitterrand regime differed
from conventional Keynesianism was its

emphasis on nationalization. The gov-
ernment took over a number of major
industrial firms accounting for about a
quarter of France’s manufacturing
output I hese newly nationalized enter-
prises were supposed to be the locomo-
tive of economic grow th and the force de
frappe in the war to “reconquer the
domestic market." Mitterrand declared
"I am opposed to an international
division of labor and production, a
division decided far from our shores
and obeying interests that arc not our
own This must be made clear,
and lor us nationalization is j weap-
on to protect France’s production
apparatus "

Wall Street Journal.

7 October 1981

Instead of being a locomotive of
growth, the nationalized industrial
sector has become a white elephant.
First, to say that compensation to the
lormer owners was generous would he a
gross understatement. In a number of

cases (eg,, Saint-Gobain. Thomson-
Brandt) the owners received more in
compensation than if they liquidated
their shares on the Paris Bourse a few
months before the Socialists took office!
“Some of those companies aren’t worth
a franc," commented one Paris stock-
broker. Despite generous government
funding for investment, all of the newly
nationalized firms except one (Com-
pagnie Generate d'Electricite) lost mon-
ey in 1982 And now that austerity is the
order of the day. the nationalized
industries are under the ax. For exam-
ple. the coal syndicate. Charbonnages
de France, is planning to reduce its labor
force by 20.000 miners by 1988. Mitter-
rand’s last year in office. Instead of
being the vanguard of the "high-tech
revolution." the nationalized enterprises
have become the vanguard of retrench-
ment and layoffs.

Despite the government’s massive
infusion of money demand into the
economy, however, private capital
investment continued to plummet. Even
Delors. the minister closest to the
business community, complained:

"I expected modern factors to be more
widespread among the small and large
leaders Business and industry have an
altitude toward the state similar to an

adolescent’s toward his lather —
vengeful, vindictive, and whiny.”

— Le Nouvel Econunuste.

9 November 1981

According to Delors. during Mit-
terrand's first year in office consump-
tion in France increased by 3.7 percent,
industrial production by only 2.1
percent I he difference was made up
by a jump in imports. A government
pledged to “reconquer the domestic
market" did just the opposite. Its
policies stimulated lurther penetration
by foreign manufacturers into the
French market. In Mitterrand's first
year imports were up by 5.5 percent
while exports fell. The result: the
balance-of-payments deficit almost
quadrupled (OECD Economic Survey.
France. March 1983). By mid-1982 the
Bank of France was fast running out of
foreign exchange reserves and foreign
credit. Mitterrand’s France was becom-
ing the Poland of West Europe.

Mitterrand’s last hope to maintain his
policy of "Keynesianism in one country"
was played out at the June 1982
Versailles economic summit As host the
French president proposed a series of
grandiose schemes for restructuring the
world capitalist economy All these
schemes had one thing in common they
would channel other people’s money,
mainly denominated in dollars and
Deutschmarks, into the coffers of the
Bank of France. In particular the
French made a big push for internation-
al currency stabilization, a scheme to
have the U.S. Federal Reserve take over
the hopeless job of propping up the
faltering franc.

Quite possibly Mitterrand believed
that his fervent anti-Sovietism entitled
him to American economic largesse (a
new Marshall plan). But lacing the
worst economic crisis since the Great
Depression. U.S. imperialism w-as nei-
ther willing nor able to subsidize any
West European experiments in social
reformism. A Wall Street Journal
editorial (9 June 1982) commented
acidly on Mitterrand’s call for interna-
tional currency stabilization:

“That would, in effect, amount to
hitching the dollar to the spending
schemes of France’s Socialist govern-
ment and mercifully the Reagan team
managed to slip out of Versailles
without promising anything more than
a study of the whole idea of currency
intervention."

With Wall Street having cut off its credit
the M itterrand regime had to replace the
language of solidarity with that of
rigueur. a euphemism for austerity.

... to Rigueur I & II

A week after the disastrous Versailles
summit the Mitterrand regime devalued
the franc for the second time and
announced an austerity program de-
signed to reduce consumption by 2-3
percent. Wages and prices were frozen
for four months. This freeze antago-
nized both labor and capital: the
workers because it cut their living
standards, the industrialists because
they couldn’t pass on the increased costs
(e.g., for imported oil) resulting from
the devaluation.

The bourgeois press and politicians
had a field day baiting the Socialist
Communist government for imposing
an austerity program more severe than
anything the Gaullists or Giscardians
had ever attempted. Writing in the
conservative Le Figaro magazine Chi-
rac sounded like a social democrat
denouncing a right-wing monetarist
regime:

“Until 10 May 198 1, despite the crisis,
successive governments had managed
to maintain the standard of living ol (he
I reneh. to improve the situation ol the
most underprivileged and 10 guarantee
social welfare lodav. under pressure
from a strained economy made worse
by its own mistakes, the government is
jeopardizing those achievements
“What a paradox u is to see a socialist
and communist government follow a
policy that is no longer social at all!"’
— U S. Joint Publications

Research Service. West Europe
Report, 12 January 1983

continued on page 10

Deutsch/Paris Match

Aulo workers march through Renault-Flins plant. May 1982. Immigrant
workers, predominantly North African Arabs, are in the vanguard of labor
struggles against Mitterrand’s austerity.

Allan/Sygma

Symbol of French Stalinists' repulsive chauvinism: Flomes of black African
immigrants bulldozed by Communist mayor of Vitry, December 1980.

9

20 JANUARY 1984

Ultrarightist policemen march on the ministry of justice, June 1983. Disastrous policies of Mitterrand popular front
fuel growing forces of bonapartist reaction.

France...

(continued from page 9)

W ith (he ignominious collapse ol its
economic program, the Mitterrand
regime's only recourse was to blame all
its trouble on the rest of the world.
Delors and lobert, for example, railed
against Japanese protectionism. West
German fiscal policy. American inter-
est rates, etc. Behind these attacks on its
major trading partners was the scarcely
veiled threat of protectionism. While the
French market is small potatoes for the
Americans and Japanese, it is vital lor
the West German industrial economy
This gives the French a certain leverage
for economic blackmail against its
major trading partner across the Rhine.

Early last year France threatened to
pull out of the European Monetary
System (a potential first step toward
pulling out of the Common Market
altogether) unless the Deutschmark was
revalued upward against all other
currencies. In other words, the Mitter-
rand government told the West Ger-
mans to sacrifice their own international
competitiveness for the sake of France’s
horrendous balance-of-pay ments situa-
tion. Bonn grudgingly realigned its
currency last March, but German
industrialists were seething in anger

Despite their strident anti-Sovietism,
the Mitterrand social democrats have by
their economic policiesantagonized two
of the most powerful forces in the
capitalist world Wall Street and the
Frankfurt Borse France's principal
imperialist allies demand a government
in Paris which is strictly monetarist,
stabilizes the franc through domestic
austerity and docs not constantly ask for
subsidies Trom the Federal Reserve and
Bundesbank under the threat to go
protectionist. The French bourgeoisie
are thus encouraged by world capitalist
opinion — as if they needed any
encouragement — to put an end to the
discredited and unpopular Mitterrand
“experiment.''

The June 1982 devaluation/austerity
measures (now known as Rigueur I)
failed to arrest the catastrophic decline
in France's international financial situa-
tion During 1982 France borrowed
more in the international money market
than any country except the United
States and Canada. Already at the
beginning of 1983 the foreign debt
exceeded S50 billion, approaching levels
such as those of Brazil and Mexico. The
mounting pressures for a new round of
devaluation/austerity produced a rift in
the Mitterrand regime between the
so-called “realists” led by Delors
and former autogesttonnaires (self-
management cultists) Michel Rocard
and Edmond Maire, on the one hand,
and the “radicals” led by minister of
industry Jean-Pierre Chevenement on
the other. The Communist Party has
likewise pushed protectionism as an al-
ternative to austerity.

Chevenement is conventionally la-
beled a Marxist and the leader of the
Socialist Party’s left wing. This is a
fundamental misunderstanding of his
role in French politics. Chevenement
actually represents the extreme dirigiste
wing of French technocracy, the so-
called enarques. graduates of the elite
Ecole Nationaled'Administration. Che-
vencment is just as distant from the
workers movement as his rivals Delors
and Rocard His base in the Socialist
Party, CERES (Center for Research.
Studies and Socialist Education), con-
sists entirely of intellectuals. When he
was named minister of industry, this
“leftist" declared to all who would listen
that he had never advocated class
struggle and that he thought there was
“place in the majority for all those who
want to loyally play the game" (Le
Figaro , 6 May 1982).

Chevenement's answer to the crisis
and the monstrous balance-of-
payments deficits is economic autarky
(or “ enarquv "). making France as
industrially self-sufficient as possible.
Chevenement's Fortress France pro-
gram is as reactionary as it is utopian.
Behind the tariff and quota walls prices
would skyrocket, while foreign retalia-
tion against French exports (automo-
biles. for example) would add hundreds
of thousands to the already massive
army of the unemployed French capi-
talism is simply too integrated into the
world market to accept the ultra-
protectionist policies of Chevenement
(and also Marchais' Communists). So
when the crunch came last March the
enfant terrible of French social democ-
racy got the ax.

Devaluation III was accompanied by
Rigueur 11: increased income taxes and
sales taxes on cigarettes and alcohol; a
forced loan of a 10 percent surcharge on
the income tax; higher rates for public
utilities such as gas, electricity, tele-
phones and railroads; increased fees for
hospitalization for the first time ever.
And that’s just half of it The other half

is a massive cutback throughout the
public sector Especially irritating were
new currency restrictions which made it
practically impossible for the ordinary
Frenchman to vacation abroad. “We
are condemned to vacations with our
grandmothers in the countryside."
exclaimed one middle-level manager in
a Paris suburb.

For French capitalism, Rigueur II is
still not severe enough and already the
government is planning for the “apres-
rigueur" — which won't be any less
rigorous. Two reputable econometri-
cians estimate that to eliminate the
balance-ol-trade deficit by 1985 the real
income of the average Frenchman must
be cut by 7-8 percent over and above the
reductions which have already taken
place (Le Monde. 3-4 April 1983). But
Mitterrand’s New- Year’s appeal for a
renewed "effort" to overcome the crisis
rings hollow in the face of universal
predictions that this year France is
about the only industrialized country in
the world where an upturn is not
expected!

Rigor Mortis of the Popular Front

Someone writing a textbook on
Marxist politics could not find a more
clear-cut case to demonstrate the utter
bankruptcy of social-democratic reform
than France in the past two and a
half years. It is as if Mitterrand had
deliberately set out to prove that
everything the Trotskyists say about
popular frontism is true This regime
has managed to antagonize just about
every sector of the population. Yet it has
been mass demonstrations of the en-
raged petty bourgeoisie under reaction-
ary leadership that have captured center
stage as the opposition to the popular
front And that is due to the systematic
undermining by the reformist mislead-
ers (helped by their “far-left" valets) of
mounting working-class anger against
the popular front's brutal austerity
measures.

The proletariat's “honeymoon” with
the Mitterrand regime brokedown after
only six months. In October 1981
atrocious working conditions in the
“model [nationalized] enterprise," Re-
nault. pitted the auto workers against
the “employer-slate." While the Confe-
deration Generate du Travail (Commu-
nist-led union federation) and Confe-
deration Frangaise Democratique du
Travail (Socialist-led union federation)
bureaucrats smothered the strikers,
confining them to individual depart-
ments or plants, the pseudo-Trotskyists
(l.CR, TO, PCI) refused to call even for
a strike of the entire Renault chain
Echoing the Socialists’ slogan for
"changement" (change), they were on
their knees before Mitterrand demand-
ing new bosses lor this nationalized
Firm!

In the winter of 1982-83 strikes broke
out again in auto — this time at Citroen,
Rcnault-Fhns. Chausson and others —
posing point-blank the necessity of an
industrywide strike The Mitterrand
regime stood exposed as viciously anti-

working-class by Prime Minister Mau-
roy's revolting attack on the largely
immigrant strikers as “Islamic funda-
mentalists” manipulated by ayatollahs.
The workers shot back: “Us. fundamen-
talists? Bring us a bottle of whiskey and
we'll see!" ( Liberation . 29-30 January
1983). Once again the trade-union
bureaucrats refused to organize a
genuine counterattack to management
lockouts, the Stalinist social-chauvinists
refusing to block production of "red.
white and blue" autos. The response of
Mitterrand’s “Trotskyist" tails: peti-
tions and postcards designed to pressure
the social democrats. Today the bitterly
fought strike at Talbot sharply poses the
possibility of a working-class f ight back
against the government's intertwined
austerity/anti-immigrants campaign.

In the service of the popular front the
mass reformist parties, the trade-union
bureaucrats and their “far-left” accom-
plices have banded together to smother
working-class struggle against the anti-
working-class Mitterrand regime. A key
component has been social-chauvinist
protectionism And it is precisely the
immigrant workers, the least susceptible
to these social-patriotic appeals, who
are playing the lead role in strike
struggles. But as the experience of the
Mitterrand popular front shows,
working-class mobilization against ra-
cist terror and a counteroffensive
against austerity, it it is to be successful,
must lead to sweeping away not just “the
right" but the capitalist system as such
This requires the construction of a
conscious revolutionary leadership to
combat popular frontism — a Leninist-
Trotskyist vanguard party.

Mitterrand’s “left" and “far-left"
lawyers have but one last card to play to
keep the proletariat chained to a
manifestly bankrupt regime — the black-
mail threat of a return to power by the
“right." But the result of the popular
front has been to drive the petty-
bourgeois masses into the arms of the
rightist reaction, dramatically demon-
strated by the emergence of Le Pen’s
fascist National Front as a serious, even
“respectable" political force. Trotsky
wrote of Germany in 1932: “The policy
ol reformism deprives the proletariat of
the possibility of leading the plebeian
masses of the petty bourgeoisie and
thereby converts the latter into cannon
fodder for fascism” (“The Only Road")
Certainly, the present situation in
France is a far cry from that of Germany
on the eve of the Nazi takeover But w ho
will deny that the Mitterrand popular
front has enormously strengthened the
forces of racist reaction and the danger
of right-wing bonapartism? To counter
the demagogic appeal of a Chirac or a
Le Pen. the working class must break
with Mitterrand and offer a way out of
the deepening capitalist crisis.

In most other West European
parliamentary regimes, as well as under
the Fourth Republic, a government as
unpopular as Mitterrand’s would al-
ready have fallen But to overcome the
extreme governmental instability of the
Fourth Republic, the 1958 Constitution
made France the most structurally

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10

WORKERS VANGUARD

In Mitterrand’s France,

North African Workers Take the Lead

PARIS. January 15 — The bitter strike
ol the courageous immigrant workers
at I albot-Poissy — isolated and aban-
doned by their sellout union leaders—
has ended in defeat. But after 23 days of
occupying the large auto factory in the
Paris suburbs, alter having retaken the
buildings following their expulsion by
the CRS (riot police) shock brigades,
alter the bloody battle of Department
B3. where they defended themselves
against an assault by a thousand scabs
and by professional thugs, the Talbot
strikers have given an example to
worker-militants throughout France.

The Talbot-Poissy factory has the
highest percentage in France of immi-
grant workers, with 53 percent of its
labor force composed of foreign-born
workers, predominantly North African
Arabs, more than 80 percent of whom
can neither read nor write. When the
hammer came down on them these
immigrant workers fought — and how
they fought!

The showdown came with the battle
of January 5. The company brought in
hundreds of foremen and other supervi-

sory personnel from all over the Peugeot
empire. (The PSN fascists bragged
about dispatching their thugs to Poissy
as well.) A dozen plainclothes goons
armed with slingshots, fire extinguishers
and (some of them at least) revolvers
headed the charge ol the "blue shirts."
Against this violent assault, the workers
occupying Department B3 counter-
attacked with anything they could lay
their hands on. There wasa rain of bolts;
entire parts of chassis were hurled from
the overhead passageways. After an
hour the assailants were withdrawn by
management and the hundreds of
strikers remained in their besieged fort.
Outside, the frustrated racist scabs
shouted. "To the gas ovens!"

It was then the CFDT (union
federation led by Mitterrand’s Socialist
Party) abandoned the struggle. “Now I
am afraid.” said Talbot CFDT leader
Jean-Pierre Noual. Instead of calling for
emergency reinforcements from nearby
auto factories (Renault-Flins, Citroen-
Aulnay) the CFDT called . . the police.
Then hours later the strikers were
evacuated from the buildings between

Talbot-Poissy,
January 5—
Foreign-born auto
workers hold off
attack by one
thousand scabs
and professional
thugs.

two lines of CRS riot cops. Immediately
afterwards management declared a
lockout for several days and the CFDT
called off the strike.

At a time when the regime of “aus-
terity Socialist" president Francois
Mitterrand is shaken by an apparently
interminable economic crisis and driven
into a corner by the increasingly
aggressive forces of reaction, the Talbot
workers’ struggle could have touched
off a strike wave to beat back the joint
offensives of the employers and govern-
ment, thereby opening the perspective
of revolutionary struggles. At this

turning point the fate of Francedepends
on the construction of a truly Bolshevik
party which can fight class collabora-
tion and racial oppression, forging a
powerful working-class mobilization
inspired by the current vanguard of
immigrant workers. That is the goal of
the Ligue Trotskyste de France.

Reformists Against the
Talbot Workers

The Talbot strike was a flash of
lightning starkly outlining the political
landscape of France under the popular
continued on page 12

The Battle of Talbot

bonapartist state of any bourgeois
democracy. In a "crisis" the president
can declare a state of emergency, giving
him almost unlimited powers. The
reactionaries, including the Gaullists,
are now bridling at the rigidities of de
Gaulle’s Constitution. Last spring Chi-
rac called lor a referendum on the
government's economic policies. II
Mitterrand lost — and there was no
question about that — then presumably
he would resign and call new elections.
Since the first social-democratic presi-
dent of the F if t h Republic is not likely to
voluntarily commit political suicide in
this particular manner, the bourgeoisie
tested the prospects for putting an end
to the Mitterrand “experiment” bv
unconstitutional means.

Thus last spring saw the most threat-
ening reactionary mobilizations since
1958 and the paramilitary ultrarightist
OAS. Peasants, shopkeepers, students,
police, lens of thousands of the fren/ied
petty bourgeoisie took to the streets
shouting "We got Allende, we’ll get you.
Mitterrand!" (see “Unpopular Front in
Prance.” Part I. ICC No. 339. 7 October
1983). The ultraright mobilization
continued last October as technicians
and lower-level managers, many of
whom voted for Mitterrand, paraded to
chants of "To the Elvsee [presidential
palace]! Kill, kill the Communists!”
Having given the green light to racist
police terror and relying increasingly on
the CRS — a bonapartist special police
force par excellence — to suppress
strikes, it was the popular Iront itself
which paved the way for these reaction-
ary scum.

Farlier popular fronts in Prance
similarly dug their own graves. When in
March 1937 riot police shot down anti-
fascist demonstrators at Clichy. Social-
ist prime minister l eon Blum found the
situation too hot to handle and passed
the governmental reins to his bourgeois
bloc partners, the Radicals. Succeeding
Radical governments of the Popular
Front launched a full-scale assault on
the gains wrested trom the bourgeoisie
in June 1936. eliminating the 40-hour
week, culminating in the crushing ofthe
November 1938 general strike I lie slow
disintegration of the Popular Front
came to a close when the same parlia-
ment which had given the Popular
Pront its majority approved Petain's
dictatorship (including a number of

social-democratic deputies).

Then, as now. the Trotskyists rep-
resented an irreconcilable proletarian
opposition to the bankruptcy of popular
frontism; fighting for full rights for
foreign workers, for workers defense
guards based on the unions, for workers
control (dual power in the factories) and
the establishment of a genuine workers
government based on organs of workers
power — soviets growing out of the
centralization of strike committees.

For the Socialist United States
of Europe!

There is no way out of the deepening
capitalist crisis within a purely national
framework. The protectionist Fortress
France advocated by Chevenement and
the Communist Party is not only a
reactionary utopia, would not only
worsen the material conditions of the
French populace, but goes in exactly the

opposite direction Irom the only pro-
gressive solution the unity of the
French and German proletariat in the
socialist reconstruction of Europe. West
Germany, like France and the rest of
capitalist Europe, is suffering from the
highest unemployment since the early
postwar years. For the Christian Dem-
ocrats in Bonn, like the Mitterrand
popular front, the only way to improve
international competitiveness is to slash
social programs and dismantle entire
industrial sectors. But when in the fall of
1982 the Christian Democrats replaced
the Social Democrats through a parlia-
mentary maneuver, the new Kohl
regime was greeted by mass trade-union
protests with many militants talking
about a political general strike. Since
then West Germany has experienced an
upsurge of industrial militancy. For
example, recently in the ports of Bremen
and Hamburg workers occupied ship-
yards scheduled to be shut down

These militant working-class actions
are taking place when political ferment
in West Germany is greater than at any
time since the founding of the Federal
Republic in 1948 The deployment of
the first-strike Pershing 2 missiles,
under the command of the anti-Soviet
fanatic Reagan, has deeply polarized
West Germany. However, the Social
Democracy, in particular, is directing
this widespread pacifistic sentiment into
a resurgent German nationalism — anti-
American and anti-Soviet — whose basic
goal is to reconquer East Germany and
restore German imperialist hegemony in
East Europe Thus, theanti-^or/r/smeof
Chevenement and the French Commu-
nist Party is mirrored by the ominous
resurgence of German nationalism in
social-democratic coloration As the
objective basis and need for unity in
struggle of the French and German
working classes becomes ever clearer
and more urgent, the reformistson both
sides of the Rhine step up theirchauvin-
isi demagogy. Against the new German
nationalism ofthe "left" as well as of the
traditional right, the Trotskyists call for
the revolutionary reunification of Ger-
many. A unified German workers state
would be the industrial core for the
socialist reconstruction of Europe.

But the spark for the revolutionary
remaking of Europe could well come
from the left bank ofthe Rhine as it has
in the past. The Great French Revolu-
tion of 1789-93 is the fountainhead of
social progress in the modern world
From Madrid to St Petersburg genera-
tions of revolutionaries modeled them-
selves on the Jacobins. Lenin defined a
Bolshevik as a “Jacobin who wholly
identifies himself with the organization
of the proletariat." The Paris Commune
of 1871— the first workers govern-
ment— directly inspired the Bolshevik
Revolution of 1917. May ’68 not only
shook the French bourgeois order to its
foundations and toppled de Gaulle’s
throne, but set otl alarm bells from the
Frankfurt Borse and NATO headquar-
ters in Brussels to the Pentagon and
Wall Street. The answer to Mitterrand’s
austerity and the growing danger of
rightist bonapartism is for the French
working class to return to its world-
shaking historic traditions and shatter
the ancien regime ol the decaying
capitalist order. Forward to the Social-
ist United States of Europe!*

When Reagan
toured Europe in
June 1982, the Ligue
Trotskyste de
France in Paris (top)
and the
Trotzkistische Liga
Deutschlands in
Bonn (bottom)
marched tor
unconditional
military defense ot
the Soviet Union
against NATO
imperialism and for a
Socialist United
States of Europe.

20 JANUARY 1984

11

Victory to the McDonnell Douglas Strike !

Stop

1AM Scabbing!

LOS ANGELES— The strike of 6,800
United Auto Workers (UAW) mem-
bers, now entering its fourth month
against McDonnell Douglas aircraft
plants in California, Oklahoma and
Arkansas, is threatened from within by
scabbing. The International Associa-
tion of Machinists (I AM) earlier accept-
ed the company’s brutal giveback terms,
and 1AM bureaucrats have kept 4,000
aircraft workers in Douglas Aircraft
plants, herding many of them across
UAW picket lines.

The company’s demands, modeled
alter a settlement between the 1AM and
Boeing Aircraft last year, are designed
to rip up industrial unionism by pitting
skilled workers against lower paid and
newly hired workers. Douglas is de-
manding a total wage freeze, excepting a
minority ol higher paid workers; sharp
cutbacks in cost-ol-livmg (COLA) and
other benefits, with COLA totally
denied to the lowest paid section of the
workforce; and a spurious 3 percent

“bonus” in lieu of a wage increase.

Even more ominously, Douglas
wants to establish vastly reduced pay
and benefit scales lor new hires. Jobs
that now pay SI 1.50/hr. in California
plants would start at $6.70, with periods
ranging up to 25 years before new hires
would reach “full pay” (at levels sub-
stantially below what they are today).
Such provisions, which have been
incorporated in contracts at Boeing,
Lockheed, American Airlines and most
recently at Greyhound, do away with
the hard-won gam guaranteeing equal
pay for equal work. As one 20-year
worker at Douglas Aircraft’s Long
Beach plant put it "They want to take
away what generations of union mem-
bers have fought to win. what people
deceased and buried fought for . . . they
want to take it away so generations
coming up won’t have it" ( Los Angeles
Times, 3 January). But UAW officials
are not opposing the lower scales for
new workers.

The sharpest blow directed at
Douglas workers has come from the
1AM bureaucracy headed by "Wimpy"
Winpisinger The 1AM settled with both
Lockheed and Douglas after the UAW
strike began, and have continued
scabbing at McDonnell Douglas ever

since. The same thing happened in 1978.
when UAW members went out alone
against Douglas for over 90 days, with
both UAW and 1AM officials demand-
ing that 1AM members stay on the job.
And in 1975 it was the UAW that
crossed I AM picket lines!

The orgy of scabherding led by union
bureaucrats is killing the labor move-
ment. Certainly for Winpisinger such
backstabbing is nothing new. Wimpy,
who is co-chair of the Democratic
Socialists of America (DSA), was
widely hailed by the fake-left as a new
breed of “militant” when he became
president of the 1AM a few years ago.
Then came PATCO. The IAM-
organized airline mechanics were
among several key unions with the
power to shut down the airports and
smash Reagan’s union-busting. But
Winpisinger kept them on the job.
hiding behind the AFL-CIO bureaucra-
cy’s no-win "strategy" of an impotent
consumer boycott. And the company
cops in UAW’s Solidarity House are no
better; their latest exploit was to herd
U AW-orgamzed Greyhound baggage
handlers and mechanics across the
drivers’ picket lines in Detroit.

This inter-union backstabbing must
be halted now! For a joint industrywide

strike of all aircraft workers! UAW
workers must elect strike committees to
mobilize their I AM brothers and sisters
to join the picket lines. Scrap the
sellouts at Lockheed and Boeing as
well — and bring out on strike now the
55,000 UAW aircraft workers whose
contracts expire later this year. For
mass, militant picket lines that nobody
crosses! Smash the bosses’ takeaway
demands: for lull cost-of-living benefits,
a big pay boost, equal pay for equal
work at the highest levels!

The union-busting drive at home is
the domestic side of the bourgeoisie’s
anti-Soviet war drive. Social-
democratic labor traitors like Winpi-
singer and the UAW’s Owen Bieber.
who push chauvinist protectionism and
ardently support the military rearma-
ment of the imperialists, aren’t about to
stand up to the Pentagon and its friends
at Lockheed. Boeing and McDonnell
Douglas. To smash the bosses’ union-
busting drive, workers need a class-
struggle program and leadership capa-
ble of mobilizing a real labor offensive
against the capitalists. Such a leadership
can only be forged through a relentless
political fight to expose and defeat
the traitorous, pro-imperialist labor
bureaucracy ■

Battle
of Talbot...

(continued front page II)

front of the ’80s. Foreign-born industri-
al workers, fighting to save their jobs,
were confronted by an offensive of the
entire ruling class, from the little kings
of Peugeot who believe in the "divine
right" of private property, to the most
“enlightened” managers, educated in the
elite universities, who run the national-

ized companies in the interests of
French capital. On the side of the
Peugeot bosses were the "left" govern-
ment, the Socialist and Communist
( PCF) parties, and the sellout leaders of
the unions who fulfilled their role as
firemen putting out the flames of the
feared “workers' revolt.”

Last summer the management of the
PSA group (Peugeot), owner of Talbot
for the last two years, announced its
intention to slash more than 4,000 jobs
at the Poissy plant Following walkouts
by Talbot workers, the government
decided to postpone the decision. In
October the PCF minister of employ-
ment, Jack Ralite. accepted 1.000-plus
job cuts accomplished through “early

retirement." On December 7, as rumors
spread that the projected 2,900 layoffs
would be approved, several hundred
immigrant workers occupied the plant
Ten days later the government an-
nounced with much fanfare a deal
negotiated by Ralite, the company and
the CGT (Communist-led union federa-
tion) which set the total layoffs at 1 .900,
with phony training programs for the
fired workers. Prime Minister Pierre
Mauroy spoke of “industrial recon-
struction with a human face," but the
Talbot workers affected by this plan
rejected it almost unanimously. The

explosive situation threw the Stalinists
and Socialists into a total mess, both in
the unions and in the cabinet.

The hard-line Peugeot management
was determined to flush out one of the
centers of working-class resistance,
which played a vanguard role in theauto
strikes of 1982-83. They wanted to
reestablish the paternalistic labor rela-
tions of days past, when the bosses
seemed like colonial plantation owners.
I he labor force was recruited in remote
villages of Morocco, where the latter-
day slave traders of Simca (later
Chrysler-France. then Talbot, now a
subsidiary of Peugeot) selected illiterate
peasants almost exclusively Once in the
plant they were controlled by the scab

"union" which includes a large number
of poor white colonialists from Algeria
and ex-legionnaire types. It was a
reproduction of colonial society at the
very heart of French industry. And
when they went into revolt against
Mitterrand’s layoffs, these North Afri-
can wage-slaves stood at the center of
class struggle in France.

The Talbot strike ended in defeat But
it is a defeat that could anger the
working class rather than demoralize it.
Government plans call for “trimming"
up to 40,000 jobs in auto. 20.000 in steel,
thousands in shipbuilding, closingdown
whole regions of coal mining. This must
be answered by joint strike action,
leading toward a general strike. If the
workers do not fight back, the reaction-
aries are waiting in the wings. The
ultrarightist cop demonstration last
June was an indication of the real
bonapartist threat to replace one more
of France’s unstable bourgeois-
democratic governments with a new
“strong state," unless the proletariat
takes its fate in its own hands.

Forging a Trotskyist Party

What is needed is a revolutionary
party that told the truth about the
Mitterrand regime Irom the beginning,
and thus was prepared to organize a
thoroughgoing class struggle against it.
What is needed is a genuinely commu-
nist party that acts as a “tribune ol the
people," championing the immigrants’
cause. From the beginning ol the Talbot
strike, the Ligue Trotskyste (LTF)
sought concrete means to extend the
strike and win it

An LTF comrade at the Renault-
Cleon auto plant in Rouen led a
delegation of CGT members and other
auto workers which visited the Talbot-
Poissy plant on December 29 to show
their solidarity with the striking immi-
grant workers. An open letter by the
LTF comrade reporting to Cleon
workers on the delegation (subsequently
reproduced and distributed by the LTF
in French and Arabic) called for the
election of strike committees to lead a
general strike of auto. Other demands
included extension of the strike to
supplier and dependent industries like
steel and transport, immediate 24-hour
strike at Renault-Cleon to lay the basis
for a national strike; occupation of the
plant protected by mass pickets; full
citizenship rights for foreign workers.

The Ligue Trotskyste was virtually
unique in linking the government/
employer offensive against the Talbot
workers with the racist campaign of cop
and fascist terror against immigrant
neighborhoods in France during the
past year. At a January 14 march we
chanted: "Cops out of the immigrant
districts!” and "Against the fascists,
against the racists — workers militias!”
The LTF banner directly addressed the
defeatist sentiments sown by the failure
of the French workers movement to
back up the strike; the banner declared
“Don’t pack your bags — Not one layoff
or deportation — For a general auto
strike!" Another banner proclaimed:
“French and immigrant workers—
Break with Mitterrand and his left tails,
liquidators of the Talbot strike."

While the pseudo-Trotskyists kow-
tow' to the chauvinist union tops, the
Ligue T rotskyste has the right to oppose
the defeatism among North African and
black African workers in France be-
cause of our consistent opposition to all
forms of chauvinism. In the 1981
elections the LTF had raised the
possibility of critical support to the
PCF’s Georges Marchais, until the
PCF’s bulldozer attack against the
immigrant community in the Paris
suburb of Vitry. We pointed out that the
Communist Party’s disgusting racism
(shown also in the protectionist “Pro-
duce French" campaign) is support it)
one’s “own" bourgeoisie.

Relormism is necessarily nationalist,
revolutionary socialism is international-
ist Thus in crawling after Mitterrand,
the “far left" has joined in the anti-
Soviet war drive, whose architects are
not only in the White House but also in
the Elysee. Denouncing Mitterrand’s
anti-Sovietism, the LTF comrade’s
open letter to the Renault-Cleon work-
ers pointed out: "By the way, comrades
of the PCF, if the ‘comrade ministers’
were currently in a real workers govern-
ment, the NATO generals would be
counting the French missiles on the
Soviet side instead of the reverse." With
the arms buildup for an imperialist war
against the Soviet Union already well
advanced, with Reagan embarked on a
wave of provocations from Central
America to Lebanon, the question of
“after Mitterrand. what?" takes on
world importance. 7 he French working
class has the power and duty to answer
for a workers Commune!*

Der Spiegel

Workers occupy T albot-Polssy plant lor 23 days In fight against mass layoffs.
Reformist union leaders sold them out.

12

WORKERS VANGUARD

Jail the Killer Cops!

D.C. Cops on Racist
Terror Rampage

WASHINGTON, D.C. —It was a cold-
blooded racist killing last December 15
when at least nine cops swooped down
on 22-year-old black youth Darryl
Rhones. pummeled him to the ground,
then dragged him oil to 1 bird District
police headquarters where he was later
found strangled to death. The medical
examiner labeled the cause of death
“cardio-respiratory arrest attributed to
neck compression " 1 ranslated, this

means Rhones was the latest black
victim ol the murderous police "choke
hold" grasp which "cuts oil air to the
lungs or blood to the brain." The pre-
planned assault was another “kill
mission" of the Third District hit
squad— the notorious elite drug task
force set up by D.C. black mayor
Marion Barry in 1981. Two days later,
the death ol another minority man in
police custody sent more shock waves
through black Washington.

When on the night of December 15.
after the cops said an “unidentified
citizen" told them Rhones might have
been involved in a shooting earlier that
evening, they made their move. Without
warning, the members of this elite killer
squad jumped out of their unmarked
cars and grabbed Rhones. In front of his
I l-year-old sister and other horrified
relatives and neighbors who were
prevented Irom going to his aid. the cops
beat Rhones to a pulp:

“• They grabbed and handcuffed him.
They were hitting him with their billies,
those little black things they wear Hit
him around the neck. His little sister,
she’s eleven, was hollering and scream-
ing. "That's my brother."... They drug
him to the car. Didn't even carry him.
They drug him by his shoulders, with his
feet dragging. They put him in the back
seat He had knots on his head. On the
top of his head and on his face. H is eyes
looked like light bulbs.”’

— Washington Post,

17 December 1983

This was how an eyewitness, Wanda
Haire, described the incident. Other
eyewitnesses say that after Rhones was
handcuffed he was beaten for upwards

of twenty minutes. One District official
reported that the cops "accidentally [!]
dropped Rhones, head first, onto a
pavement as they struggled to put him
inside a patrol car."

Rhones was hauled into Third
District police headquarters shortly
before 9 p.m. where he was carried to a
secluded upstairs area near the detec-
tives’ office. Later they claim he was
found in the cellblock “totally uncon-
scious" and taken to George Washing-
ton Hospital where he was pronounced
dead It was not until early the next
morning, more than five hours alter
Rhones was officially declared dead,
that the cops began their modus
operandi of declaring the dead victim
guilty of the crime of"assaulting a police
officer"!

In reward for their vicious killing, the
nine cops were given "administrative
leave with pay," (i.e.. a paid vacation)
pending a D.C. Superior Court grand
jury investigation. But according to one
eyewitness, one of the cops involved in
the fatal beating is still on the job
"investigating” the case. Two days after
the Rhones killing, another minority
resident. 29-year-old Loren Thomas,
supposedly arrested for “disorderly
conduct." was found suffocated to death
in the back seat of a police car upon
arriving at the self-same Third District
headquarters. This racist cop rampage
must be stopped! Jail the killer cops!

In the wake of this atrocity the
bourgeois press has tried to alibi cold-
blooded racist murder by screaming
that Darryl Rhones’ police record

justilied beating and choking him to
death! I hus a 2 1 December Washington
Post article grotesquely demanded to
know why Rhones "had managed to
remain on the streets despite serious
pending charges and a seemingly endless
series ol court appearances ” It went on
to quote a "senior official in the U S.
Attorney's office" that “If I had my way,
he would have been locked up, and I
think a lot more people like [him]
should be locked up too"! For the cops,
and the Post, every black kid is guilty ol
something, first and foremost ol the
"crime" ol being black in racist capitalist
America where ghettoized, lumpem/ed.
terrorized, they are picked up by the
cops on the slightest infraction and then
their "record" is used to justify any
atrocity against them!

The Third Precinct was after Darryl
Rhones, a youth from the devastated
ghetto community which borders How-
ard University in Northwest Washing-
ton. To them his life wasn't worth a plug
nickel. Ever since he was 18 years old
the cops had had him in and out of court
on charges of everything from burglary
to possession of PCP to second degree
murder; at the time of his death there
were six outstanding charges against
him. But the cops had never been able to
make the charges stick. Like so many
black young men in the so-called “land
of the free," he was living on borrowed
time. Rhones’ mother, Joan Allen,
charged: “A number of times they
jumped on Darryl and they couldn’t find
anything. ... It was the early part of 1983,
Darryl said they told him that they were

going to get him and that they were
going to kill him. He came into the
house and said, ‘Momma, why do they
want to kill me?’ Alter that it was just
constant harassment ."

Indeed. DC. mayor Marion Barry
has given the terrorist squad from the
I bird Precinct a green light to run amok
in the black community. The Shaw-I4th
Street district where Rhones was beaten
is part of the "riot corridor” |ust blocks
from the White House; the cops’ "war
on drugs" has been the justification lor
maintaining a reign ol terror on the
black population Far lrom stopping
drug traflic, as shown in New York
City’s famous Knapp Commission
report in the 1960s, inner city cops are
notoriously the biggest pushers of
narcotics, while enforcing bourgeois
"law and order" through racist intimida-
tion and brutal violence. Police terror,
layolfs of black city workers, killer
cutbacks in basic social services — these
are Mayor Barry's program the big city
Democratic mayors, black as well as
white, function as the overseers on the
capitalist plantation.

Killer cops and racist terror groups
thrive in the political climate of theanti-
labor/anti-black offensive in Reagan’s
America. To stop the race terrorists in
white sheets and blue uniforms will
require a revolutionary struggle for
workers power against the racist capital-
ist system A revolutionary' party of the
multiracial American working class
must be built in class-struggle defense of
the working people, especially the most
oppressed sectors, against the brutal
rule of decaying capitalism. This per-
spective was powerfully glimpsed on 27
November 1982 when over 5,000 black
workers and youth took part in the
Labor/Black Mobilization initiated by
the Spartacist League which stopped the
Ku Klux Klan from marching in the
nation's capital. Jail the killer cops! For
militant labor/black- mobilizations
against KKK racist terror! For a
workers party to fight for a workers
government! ■

Reagan
to Poor...

(continued front page I )

oppression — at the heart of American
capitalism — has become increasingly
more open. That is why capitalism’s
answer to growing black poverty is: "Let
them starve."

Capitalism isn’t going to do anything
about hunger except create more racist
campaigns to deny its existence. What
about the soup kitchens spreading out
across the country? Oh. those —
Reagan's vicious roly-poly adviser
Edwin Meese summed up the case for
the government: "People go to soup
kitchens because the food is free, and
that’s easier than paying for it" (New
York Times. 15 December 1983). But
hungry people keep appearing with their
empty bowls. So Reagan appointed a
commission on hunger to expose these
freeloaders once and for all.

Reagan's tat-cat panel was composed
ol "Iree enterprise" mouthpieces like
Midge Dector of the “Committee for the
Free World."concerned about “starving
masses” only when they’re in places like
Poland (where nobody is starving) Like
Dr George Graham, an expert on
taking food out of kids’ school lunches,
who thinks blacks haven’t got any “food
problem": “Look around at the black
athletes on television.” he said, "they’re
a pretty hefty bunch." They should have
gotten Dr. Mengeletoadd his “scientif-
ic" opinions, too, though the Nazi tor-
turer was probably too busy spying for
the CIA in South America to make it.

Now Dr. Graham, one of Reagan’s
regular scientific advisers, is telling us a
race that produced Kareem Abdul
Jabbar and Moses Malone hasn’t got
anything to complain about. Well, we
expect the slave gladiators in the old

Roman arena were pretty well led too.
But at least along with their circuses, the
old Roman tyrants occasionally dis-
tributed some bread.

Reagan's panel wrestled with the
definition of “hunger” until they were
able to effectively deny its existence.
“Herr Doktor” Graham expressed the
racism of the administration when he
explained that the low birth weights of
black babies (a standard evidence of
malnutrition) was in fact part of the
“black problem" and would best be
addressed by "a series of cultural
changes"— like “avoiding sex during
pregnancy"! (New York Times, 10
January).

Hunger is at the extreme end of the
attacks on all workers in this country.
But what is to be done? The labor
bureaucrats sell out the workers’
struggles and say: vote for the Demo-
crats. And the Democrats talk about
Reagan’s lack of “compassion," elec-
tioneering lor a little more soup, while
the reformist left follows along behind
with their ladles. But it is the Democrats
who began the attacks on the cities. And
ii is the Democratic mayors, and the
black mayors at that, who act as
overseers on capitalism’s wretched
plantations.

This attack on the poor is part of the
generalized assault on the entire work-
ing class. It is either fight or starve. But a
fight by labor has been crippled by the
pro-capitalist labor “leaders" who sat by
with folded hands and watched union
after union smashed or defeated, from
PATCO to the phone strike last year to
Greyhound And the black front men
for capitalism like Jesse Jackson are
racing madly around trying to sell
blacks on the racist "American dream."

The ghetto and the factory are
inextricably linked the fate of one is the
fate of the other in this country.
Boarded-up small businesses and homes

surrounding U.S. Steel’s South Works,
once Chicago’s largest single source of
jobs, stand as mute testimony to the
destruction of a whole section of black
and working-class Chicago. What’s
needed is militant action by labor and
blacks to turn back the reactionary and
racist offensive. One sit-down strike in
Chicago or Detroit is worth all the soup
lines and relief programs. Such action
would mobilize the ghetto masses
behind a fighting labor movement to
begin to beat back the racist anti-labor
offensive.

The recent break in the economic
conjuncture may have the big stock-
holders cheering, but it has also rekin-
dled the fighting spirit of the workers. In
the face of the bosses’ union-busting
drive, aided and abetted by government
strikebreaking. Greyhound strikers and

copper miners in Arizona conducted
themselves with courage and determina-
tion on the picket lines.

But without a revolutionary leader-
ship that can unite the working class and
oppressed in anti-capitalist struggle
there has not been — and will not be —
genuine victory. The utter bankruptcy
of capitalism, with widespread hunger
at the peak of “economic recovery” —
speaks for itself. The task is to forge a
revolutionary party of black and white
workers that can organize a fight to do
away with capitalist exploitation once
and for all by ripping the productive
wealth of this country, including all the
idle factories, out of the hands of the
capitalist class and replace it with a
workers government and planned econ-
omy that can provide jobs and decent
living standards for all. ■

Sponsored by the Partisan Defense Committee

Wednesday, February 1, 8 p.m. to 2 a.m.

5832 Georgia Avenue, N.W.

• Celebrate the victory against the Moomes’ Washington Times libel of the
November 27, 1982 Labor/Black Mobilization that stopped the KKK

• Defend Lauren Mozee and Ray Palmiero— victims of racist union-busting
frame-upt Lauren and Ray must not go to jail!

■ Tickets ($5) available at:

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5832 Georgia Ave . N W 2849 Georgia Ave , N W 1347 Connecticut Ave . N W

Proceeds to the Partisan Defense Committee For more information: (202) 636-3537

WASHINGTON, D.C.

20 JANUARY 1984

13

Cockburn...

(continued from page 3)

Cockburn doesn't account to anybody
for anything.

Cockburn. 42. Scottish, bourgeois,
grew up m Ireland, educated at Oxford.
He seems to aspire to the old British
tradition of the aristocratic radical. (7 o
borrow a phrase from another context,
one might say Cockburn is of ambigu-
ous class orientation.) Perhaps he
inherits it from his deceased father, who
wrote The Week for years and after a
stmt in the British CP went on to Punch
and Private Eve. Part of what makes his
columns so biting and effective is that he
writes like an insider. The tact is
Cockburn shares the bourgeoisie’s
social world but not their worldview.
The most prominent left-wing journalist
in America. Cockburn prefers to asso-
ciate with the bourgeoisie He recently
married Katherine Kilgore, daughter of
an ex-editor of the Wall Street Journal
For a while he lived with Washington
Post owner Katherine Graham’s daugh-
ter. and before that had a child by
Emma Rothschild We're told he hangs
out with the rest of the bourgeois literati
and aspirants to the fast lane. Cockburn
is clearly more comfortable on a UN
receiving line than on a picket line At
the Voice he feels above the union
(District 65) and voted against the 1982
strike (other rad-libs talked a lot and
sold out later). But now he needs the
union and the union ought to defend
him.

For Cockburn politics is literary; it
does not touch his personal decisions.
Revealmgly. he used marital imagery to
describe the Voice's suspension of him
on political grounds, terming it "a trial
separation" ( New York Times, 17
January).

I he Irish have an expression for
Englishmen who come to Ireland to
trade on their sophistication “Mickey
da//lers." Indeed Cockburn has been
able to dazzle in America amid the
wasteland of political culture. Where
else could he take the academics to
school over something as well known as
Marx’s (and Shakespeare’s) use of the
phrase "old Mole"? Cockburn is evi-
dently the only left-leaning journalist in
America capable of recognizing a quote
from Malraux when it really counts.

Cockburn was doing all right as the
ruling class’s literary bad boy. He has
been the highest paid writer on the
Village Voice, perhaps the highest paid
print journalist on a weekly in America.
But of course everybody knows, includ-
ing Schneiderman, that he is their only
first-rate writer. In fact, were it not for
Cockburn's political commentaries one
would have to think twice before
shelling out 90 cents for mediocre
muckraking, eccentric culture criticism,
mainstream Zionist baloney and some
movie reviews.

Cockburn surely knows the “Fool
Tradition" in English literature. The
fool is in the Court but not of it. While at
the bottom of Court Society, it is his
privilege to say anything, even the truth,
to the king. He can mock Royalty
because he is recognized as an important

critical voice in the system. Cockburn
wears his snotty w it like a suit of motley,
as protection and a sign that at bottom
he is powerless; his jibes are all part of
the royal sport.

Contrast Cockburn with a real class
traitor to the ruling class, and one with
an important political project — the
great British spy for the USSR, Kim
Philby. Philby knew politics meant you
have to roll up your sleeves and get your
hands dirty.

Cockburn thinks the ruling class
acknowledges his right to say something
approximating the truth because they
see him as one of them. But this time he's
managed to gore three oxes of the
bourgeoisie: the New York Times, the
Zionist Establishment and the Christian
fundamentalists. He thought he was
above the political I rav. but now the I ray
has come for him

The Failure of Appeasement

If Cockburn has many of the right
political enemies he has also gone out of
his way to make political enemies of
revolutionary Marxists W'hen his print-
ed pages got too close to a hot dispute in
the streets. Cockburn offered up the
Spartacist l eague as the proper target
for those who found him too left-wing.

It started after the 1979 Greensboro
massacre of blacks, leftists and union
organizers (which the Times was calling
a "shootout" between “extremists”
while the reformist left sat on its hands).
When the murderers said they would
"celebrate" their massacre by rallying in
Detroit the Spartacist League initiated

Massacre of
Sabra and
Shatila;
Cockburn
defied the U.S.

journalists'
crime of silence
over Zionist
atrocities.

That already made Cockburn some
kind of crypto-Spart in the eyes of his
rad-lib admirers. But Cockburn didn't
feel the heat until the line was drawn
hard over the SL’s call for “Military
Victory to Leftist Insurgents" in El
Salvador. With Reagan in the White
House, the reformist left saw hopes fora
big new “anti-Reagan" popular front
with the Democrats. The SL’s call cut
straight across the popular frontists’
Democrat-dictated program for a “ne-
gotiated" El Salvador sellout So the
small-time goons with bigappetites used
the cops to enforce their policy of
sealing our anti-imperialist contingents
off from other demonstrators. In a small

WV Photo

Washington, D.C., 27 March 1982: SL-organized Anti-Imperialist Contingent
sealed off in massive display of cop power. Cockburn joined with Big Liars
in violence-baiting the SL.

our first labor/black mobilization
against Klan/Nazi terror. Cockburn’s
Voice editorial, “Silent as the Graves"
(19 November 1979). lashed out at the
labor leaders and leftists who “are
content to let consensus reign":

“Dignity would at least have required
labor and its liberal allies to issue some
proclamation of grief, some demand for
justice if not revenge Courage would
demand issuance of a call for anti-
fascist demonstrations in every major
city — like the one sponsored by the
Spartacists in Detroit But our liberals
are too busy w ith I eddy, and labor is
gelling ready to elevate 1 anc Kirkland
as Meany's successor Action against
native fascism is left in the hands of the
T rotsk vists and other sectarians, w ho at
least can understand the meaning of
murder when they see it "

WORKERS VANGUARD

Marxist Working-Class Biweekly of the Spartacist League

□ $5/24 issues ot Workers Vanguard
(includes Spartacst) International rates

□ New □ Renewal $20/24 issues— Airmail
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Address

City

Phone
State _

Zip.

346

Make checks payable/mall to: Spartacist Publishing Co.. Bos 1377 GPO. New York. NY 10116

but important way a blood line was
drawn in this country between revolu-
tion and counterrevolution.

Cockburn was for military victory
and had said so often in the Village
Voice. So now he tried to appease the
anti-Spartacist cabal by distancing
himself from us with a slew of sopho-
moric name-calling and the false (as he
well knew) claim that "everybody" is for
military victory. On 6 April 1982 he
wrote “The Spartacists are a flinty lot.
with more than a whiff of Marxism-
Lemmsm-Bonkerism, but their line on
victory to the FDR/FMLN is unim-
peachable They should just learn to
stop acting like assholes. After all. most
of the demonstrators on the main march
probably espouse victory for the FDR/
FMLN too.”

It didn’t work; all the reformists saw
in Cockburn’s remarks was "their line is
unimpeachable." There was a Big Lie
campaign in full swing to justify the cop-
protected violent exclusion of the SL;
this time Cockburn's eccentric leftism
would have consequences. So with
cowardly mendacity Cockburn lined up
with the anti-Spartacist slanders in an
item titled "Assholes Revisited” ( Voice.
13 April 1982) With the SL being baited
by the fake-left as “CIA” and by the
ruling class as some kind of Soviet-
surrogate “terrorists." Cockburn joined
the chorus by writing that we had
engaged in “low level violence" against
the reformists at the March 27 demon-
stration in Washington. In our editorial
reply. "So What Makes Cockburn
Run'" (WV No. 303. 16 April) we put

the point starkly: “The evidence is clear
and complete. Cockburn — you did not
distort, you lied in this particular matter
...a particularly nasty lie for you

especially You claim to have that

very position of military victory yet
defend those who did their level best —
by themselves and then backed by the
police — to block such assembly. To liar,
one must add hypocrite.”

Cockburn’s "membership" in the
respectable left could be purchased with
a nasty line. He no doubt thought it
cheap at the price. We however gave him
some advice for free that turns out to
have been pretty accurate:

“Cockburn is a well-known columnist;
doubtless he sees the Spartacist l eague
as a tiny pariah group which he can do
to as he sees fit. Well, he’s not entirely
wrong. But in this country we don't
have a seamless set of “old hoys'
networks and it's not clear he's part of
much of one anyhow. . . ."

Overcoming Unemployment

So we defend you, Alexander
Cockburn. This surely will help to
secure your future. Perhaps there is an
opening for "Keeper of the Queen's
Pictures.” But we understand you may
want to stay in the U.S. where you are
hot stuff. Well, we can do more than
defend your civil liberties in the pages of
Workers Vanguard (like a rope supports
a hanging man?). Information on office
hours for our journalistic staff — which
works at subsistence pay and negative
perquisites — is available on request
Since our wage scale will hardly keep
you in cologne, if you come to work for
us you can take Arab money so long as
you tell us about it. and so long as we
agree to any journalistic output you
supply to WV. (In fact, if you work for
us you will need Arab money.)

We note sadly that neither Arab
money nor any other gusher of big
bucks has come our way. We get the
heat already, including from Alexander
Cockburn; we could sure use the money.
But we doubt that either big bucks or
Alexander Cockburn will come our
way. They are more likely to find each
other than to find their way to the
revolutionaries ■

Spartacist League/
Spartacus Youth League
Public Offices

-MARXIST LITERATURE -

Bay Area

Fri 5 00-0 00 pm. Sat 3 00-6 00 pm
1634 Telegraph, 3rd Floor (near 17th Street)
Oakland, California Phone (415) 835-1535

Chicago

T ues 5 30-9 00 p m , Sat 2 00-5 30 p m
523 S Plymouth Court. 3rd Floor
Chicago, Illinois Phone (312) 427-0003

New York City

Tues 6 00-9 00 p m. Sat 12 00-4 00pm
41 Warren St (one block below
Chambers St near Church St.)

New York, N Y Phone (212) 267-1025

Trotskyist League
of Canada

Toronto

Sat 100-5 00 pm

299 Queen St W , Suite 502

Toronto Ontario Phone (416) 593-4138

14

WORKERS VANGUARD

El Salvador...

(continued from page I)

has turned the struggle in Central
America into a security and political
problem lor the United States — "
Unfortunately, imperialist propaganda
that behind every movement lor social
justice in the world lurks a Kremlin plot
to spread “Marxist states" is not true
Soviet arms are not flowing to the
Salvadoran guerrillas — although they
could surely use them. Nor is the radical
nationalist Sandinista regime in Nicara-
gua getting what it needs to wipeout the
Cl A-orgam/ed contra terrorists. But for
Reagan’s purposes that’s irrelevant. He
is posing the civil war in FI Salvador and
the contra war against Nicaragua as a
confrontation with the Soviet Union
and Cuba in order to mobilize American
society for an actual war with the Soviet
bloc. That is why the Spartacist League
insists that the defense ol the Soviet
Union and Cuba — of the social gains
ol the October Revolution and its
extension — is now posed in Central
America.

Smash the Army!

Workers to Power!

But Reagan's effort to drown the
popular insurgency in El Salvador in
blood by showering dollars and weap-
ons on the kill-crazy army and death
squads is increasingly viewed as hope-
less. It becomes ever more clear that
Washington’s real options come down
to three: accept a leftist military victory,
make a deal with the petty-bourgeois
nationalist leaders of the insurgency or
send in U.S. combat troops. No section
of U.S. imperialism is prepared to
accept a leftist victory. Fearing another
“Vietnam-type" defeat, Reagan's liberal
critics offer an alternative strategy based
on betrayal of the revolutionary masses
by their own leaders. This is the meaning
of their call for a “negotiated solution"
with the opposition Revolutionary
Democratic Front (FDR)/FMLN. The
basic aim: to preserve the core of the
now-disintegrating bourgeois armed
forces.

The FDR calls for a new “people’s
army” which, however, is to include
“non-corrupt, patriotic and worthy
elements of the present army." Worthy
elements? The death squads will never
be eliminated so long as the bourgeois
officers corps which spawns them is left
intact. The Salvadoran masses suffer the
poverty and repression of backward
capitalism , and they can only be
liberated by a workers and peasants
government — a proletarian revolution
which sweeps away the landowners,
industrialists, bankers and army officers
who together form a single ruling class.

Now the moment of truth in El
Salvador is at hand. After 50 years of
repressive military rule, the last four an
especially brutal reign of terror, it is
urgently necessary to mobilize the urban
working class to take power to end the
bloodbath. It was the mass marches and
labor strikes in San Salvador and its
working-class suburbs that initiated the
current revolutionary period Now with
the hated regime tottering, the mass
uprising of urban workers and poor
could drive the nails into the coffin of

the rule of the oligarchs and their
military guard dogs.

I o be successful this fight must break
the narrow bonds of nationalism
in which the petty-bourgeois FDR/
FMI N leadership seeks to confine it
I ike their counterparts, the Sandinistas
in Nicaragua, the FDR/FMLN tops
seek to prevent class war and secure a
separate peace with rapacious U.S.
imperialism.

But Reagan has made it clear that
Sandinista capitulations and FDR/
FMI N peace proposals only whet his
appetite. Reagan is backing his butchers
with arms and money, has 5,000 GIs out
on open-ended maneuvers in Honduras
and has stationed war fleets off each
coast with another 20.000 American
troops aboard U.S bases at Comaya-
gua and Choluteca in Honduras arc
within easy striking range ol both El
Salvador and Nicaragua. And the recent

Hoagland/Gamma-Lialson

Avenge victims of right-wing death
squads!

shooting down of the U.S. army
helicopter over Nicaragua shows just
how explosive the situation is.

The U.S. is poised for invasion. To
defeat U.S. imperialism’s bloody de-
signs requires the revolutionary mobili-
zation of the Central American workers
and peasants in a struggle without
borders. This is the strategy that
imperialism fears most and one that the
petty-bourgeois nationalists of the
FDR/FMLN and the Sandinistas will
never lead. Only a Trotskyist party
armed with the program of permanent
revolution can provide that leadership.

Reagan’s Butchers on the Run

The current rebel offensive in El
Salvador began in September with a
spectacular attack on the army barracks
in San Miguel, the nation’s third largest
city. A full rebel brigade of some 1,000
soldiers laid siege for 10 hours, bom-
barding the government base with 81-
millimeter and 120-millimetcr mortars
trucked into position on the outskirts of
the city. This was the opening salvo of
an offensive which has brought most of
the eastern third of the country under

Spartacist League/ Spartacus Youth League Forum

U.S. Hands Off the World!

Reagan Is War Crazy! Defend the Soviet Union!

Speaker Tweet Carter,

Sunday, January 29, 5:00 p.m.

Wayne State University
Manoogian Hall. Room 120

For more information (313) 961-1680

DETROIT

SL Central Committee

Saturday, February 4, 7:30 p.m.

Hyde Park Hilton

4900 South Lake Shore Drive

For more information: (312) 427-0003

CHICAGO

guerrilla control. At least 31 towns and
villages have been added to the 1 1
already under rebel control before the
offensive began.

I he rebel victory at FI Paraisowasan
indication ol its growing superiority. A
modern base designed by American
military advisers. El Paraiso was sup-
posed to be invulnerable. I he guerrillas
struck while much of the garrison was
on patrol or on holiday leave. The rebels
took control of the fort after a fierce
mortar barrage. It was the biggest
guerrilla victory of the war. with the
government suffering over 300 killed
(including two colonels), wounded or
captured.

In the context ol such defeats morale
among the government soldiers is
approaching rock bottom. As a result ol
the effective guerrilla tactic of releasing
prisoners to the Red Cross, government
soldiers increasingly are choosing to
surrendei when attacked in lorce. Since
September well over 600 have surren-
dered Entire companies have surren-
dered. such as in Anamoros last Novem-
ber where 135 men gave up and handed
over their weapons in the single largest
surrender of the war. Others simply run
In Tejutepequc a 180-man unit in
defensive position broke under attack,
many running to a nearby town where
they changed into civilian clothes. This
is an army on the point of collapse
Many ol the government soldiers are
teenagers press-ganged into service at
gunpoint, with no loyally and nothing
to light for but their own skins When
the final break comes, it could be a
sudden coming apart at the seams, like
the collapse of the ARVN in South
Vietnam.

In its death agony the Salvadoran
military command only becomes more
desperate and bloodthirsty. In Septem-
ber in a battle for Tenancingo. govern-
ment A-37 Dragonfly warplanes indis-
criminately bombed the town, killing
over 100 civilians and destroying 60
percent of its buildings. In a November
atrocity involving the same U.S. -trained
Atlacatl Battalion, another lOOcivilians
were killed in three separate incidents
near Lake Suchitlan. In one incident
troops firing automatic weapons forced
30 civilians into the lake where most
drowned. In another, 20 women and
children were herded into a house and
machine-gunned.

The tragedy is that the FDR/FMLN
leaders do not want to win the war, but
cling to the notion of a “political
settlement." FDR president Guillermo
Ungo laid it out clearly in a 25 October
1983 Village Voice interview. “We are
not looking for a military victory,
because no one wants prolonged war.
Such a victory could be achieved on a
prolonged basis but leaves more chance
of American intervention, and nobody
wants that. So the best and safest way is
to achieve a political settlement.” What
kind of government does Ungo pro-
pose? He favors a “balanced, broad-
based government” in which left and far
right share power. So the FDR/FMLN
is prepared to trade its battlefield
victories and the blood of 40,000
companeros for a few cabinet portfolios
and more empty promises. Anything to
prevent social revolution The coffee
barons would maintain their strangle-
hold and the death squads would
continue to ride.

As we have insisted, only military
victory by the leftist insurgents can
smash the death squads and open the
way to a workers and peasants govern-
ment. To preserve that triumph from
Yankee imperialism the Salvadoran
masses must link up their struggle with
that of the Nicaraguan masses and
spread social revolution throughout the
isthmus. Ultimately the Central Ameri-
can masses must join forces with the
powerful and restless Mexican proletar-
iat to crush the oppressors and open up
a future for the children who now have
none. That is why we say. “Military
Victory to the Leftist Insurgents! — For
Workers Revolution Throughout Cen-
tral America!”*

Angola...

(continued from page 16)

Angola.

Alter the battle with Cuban troops at
Cuvelai, Pretoria claimed 342 enemy
dead but admitted at least 21 of its own
were killed — the highest number of
South African casualties in any of its
Angola invasions. And since these white
supremacists, like the Israeli Zionists,
believe one white South Alrican is
worth a hundred black Africans or
Cubans, casualties have the correspond-
ing demoralizing effect on their armed
forces.

Falk about a "state-supported inter-
national terrorist conspiracy"! Con-
sider the sinister Washington-Pretona
anti-Soviet axis. Ever since Angola and
Mozambique won independence. South
Africa routinely has engaged in terror
raids, sabotage, espionage and econom-
ic warfare to turn these and other
economically backward neighboring
black states into vassals of South
African imperialism. For example, in
Mozambique disruption of communica-
tions by South African-backed rebels
combined with a drought produced
40.000 deaths from starvation.

Sections of the American and West
European ruling classes tear that Pre-
toria’s imperial appetites could destabi-
lize the region and the apartheid citadel
as well U.S. assistant secretary of state
Crocker warned that southern Africa
could "end up a replica of the worst
aspects of the Middle East." These
"enlightened" imperialists point out that
Angola’s two biggest industries, oil and
diamonds, are still owned and con-
trolled by U.S. and South African capi-
tal respectively. They propose to woo
Luanda’s bourgeois-nationalist regime
away from Havana and Moscow. But
the African nationalists know all too
well that Reagan’s “linkage" (“inde-
pendence" for Namibia in exchange for
withdrawal of Cuban troops) w'ould
only "link" Angola to South Africa in a
Namibia-style colonial relationship.

In any case, however distasteful the
apartheid butchers may be to liberal
imperialists. South Africa has become
an increasingly important ally of Ameri-
ca’s global anti-Soviet war drive. The
necessary connection between hideous
racist oppression and anti-Communism
is graphically underscored by the thou-
sands of Polish Solidarnosc-lovers who
have emigrated from “totalitarian"
Poland to South Africa where whites
are “free" to live off the superexploita-
tion of enslaved black labor.

The Soviet-backed Cuban military
forces not only protect Angolan inde-
pendence and the struggle for freedom
in Namibia. They also shake South
Africa from within. Every time they give
the white supremacists a bloody nose in
Angola, it emboldens the brutally
oppressed non-white masses of South
Africa to fight to throw off their
shackles. The stinging defeat of South
Africa’s 1976 invasion was followed by
the Soweto rebellion and a rising tide of
black proletarian militancy and unioni-
zation struggles. From the gold mines of
the Rand to the docks of Durban, this
awakening black proletariat is the revo-
lutionary powerhouse for the smashing
of apartheid and for full emancipation
throughout southern Africa through
socialist revolution ■

Now Available:

Workers Vanguard
Bound Volume 14

WV Nos. 321-344
14 Jan. -16 Dec. 1983

Also Available: Vols 1-13

$20.00

per volume

Make payable/ mail to
Spartacist Publishing Co
Bo* 1377 GPO
New York, New York 10116

20 JANUARY 1984

15

WORKERS VANGUARD

Cuban Troops Defend

Salgado/Gamma-Liaison

Thousands of Cuban troops, armed with Soviet weapons, stand as border
guards of Angola's hard-won independence against South African
imperialists.

South African
Racists
Driven Back

"if Americans can afford a Grenada,
so can we," bragged South African army
chief Constand Viljoen No doubt the
sight of those white boys with guns
pushing around black Grenadians and
overpowering dark-skinned Cubans
stimulated the salivary glands ol Preto-
ria’s apartheid butchers. In December
they launched another major military
offensive, the fifth in recent years,
against black-ruled Angola, complete
with Reagan-siyle denunciations of the
Soviet “menace” and Begin-style calls
for the blood of guerrilla “terrorists.”
According to Pretoria 2,000 of its troops
(Luanda stated I0,000)drove 150 miles
into Angola while its warplanes bombed
villages. South Africa claims its targets
were guerrilla bases of the South West

On January 6, 50 supporters of vic-
timized phone-strike militants Lauren
Mozee and Ray Palmiero filled the
Hayward Municipal courtroom in
Alameda County, California It was the
third time that unionists, socialists and
other opponents of the government’s
vindictive frame-up were mobilized by
the Phone Strikers Defense Committee
(PSDC) to make their determined
presence felt in the courtroom. In the
fighting tradition of class-struggle de-
fense work, the PSDC is pursuing every
avenue of legal defense w hile placing no
confidence in the class “justice” of the
capitalist courts. It is through militant
protest and public exposure of the racist
anti-union frame-up that pressure can
be brought to bear on the DA and the
phone company to drop the charges and
reinstate the militants in their jobs.

I auren and Ray. an interracial
couple, were targeted because they did
their duty as unionists on the picket line
during last summer's national phone
strike. On picket duty in the Klan-
infested suburb of San Leandro, Lauren
was assaulted by a racist scab/manager,
Michelle Rose Hansen, who called hcra
“black nigger bitch” and struck her in
the face. Lauren defended herself, and
Ray came to her assistance. For defend-

16

African People's Organizat ion (SWAPO)
who have been fighting for 18 years to
liberate neighboring Namibia from the
boot of South African colonialism;
in fact, the hundreds of victims of the
apartheid state’s blitzkrieg were un-

ing themselves and their picket line
against racist attack. Lauren and Ray
were fired and brought up on multiple
felony charges that could put them in
state prison for years.

As we go to press, Lauren and Ray are
awaiting a court ruling, now scheduled

armed villagers.

But Angola is not going to be another
Grenada, where a few hundred poorly
armed but tenacious Cuban construc-
tion workers were finally subdued by
6,000 “crack” Yankee troops. 30 war-

for January 17. on a defense motion
demanding the charges be dropped The
motion also asks for extensive “dis-
covery" from the District Attorney's
office of materials accumulated by
various agencies before, during and
after the strike. The defense charges that

ships and dozens of warplanes after one
week ol fighting. When Angolan nation-
alists finally won independence in 1975
after a bloody decades-long struggle.
South Africa launched a massive inva-
sion. backed by the U.S.. attempting to
install its puppets in power U.S. imper-
ialism, fresh from Us humiliating mili-
tary defeat in Vietnam, was unable to
intervene directly, and the apartheid
terrorists were driven out of Angola
through the introduction of thousands
of dedicated Cuban troops. Now num-
bering between 25.000 and 30.000. these
Cuban troops, armed with Sov iet tanks
and SAM missiles, are the border
guards of Angola’s hard-won independ-
ence against the apartheid regime in
Pretoria and its big brothers in
Washington.

As Pretoria’s troops drove towards
l.uanda, Moscow initiated consulta-
tions with Cuba and Angola to further
strengthen Angola's “defenses, inde-
pendence and territorial integrity” ( New
York Titties. 13 January). On January
15, South African troops withdrew from
continued on page 15

such materials will show the massive
conspiracy between the police agencies
(cops, D A.'s office. FBI. California
attorney general, etc.) and the phone
company, whereby the cops and courts
have acted as strikebreakers in the direct
service of Pacific Telephone, picking
out and framing up picket-line militants
while helping scabs intimidate and
assault strikers.

In addition to the defense attorneys'
declaration arguing the “discovery"
demands, the defense motion includes
29 pages of testimony from phone
workers active on the picket lines during
the strike These depositions reveal how
the phone company used the cops as
their private army of strikebreakers
They document a pattern of cop-
protected management v iolence against
picketers. for w hich no scabs have been
prosecuted (Excerpts from defense
counsel Anne Flower (Turnings’ “Dec-
laration" appear on page 6; excerpts
from the phone workers’ testimony
appear on page 7.)

On this basis the defense is asking that
all charges against Lauren and Ray be
immediately dismissed on the grounds
of “discriminatory prosecution": "The
grounds for this Motion are that these
charges are the result of intentional and
purposeful discriminatory enforcement
of the law" and violate constitutionally
protected due process rights. The prec-
edent for this motion in California is a
similar challenge brought by the farm
workers union in 1975.

The defense motion constitutes a
forthright political counterattack
against the union-busting cops and
courts. It is because I auren and Rav
have taken a clear class approach,
basing their political and legal strategy
on the crucial right to have real picket
lines and defend them, that unionists
have rallied to their side. Among those
continued on page f>

20 JANUARY 1984

COUNTY OF ALAMEDA
HALL OF JUSTICE

24405 '''iKnADOn ] STREET

HAYWARD

" j . m .fit » . t

f • AfiiP

W V Photo

u

Freedom and Jobs Back for CWfl Militants!

Supporters Fill Courtroom
for Lauren and Ray

WORKERS VANGUARD

250

No. 347

3 February 1984

Fight Cold War H Witchhunt!

It was Day One of 1984, so what could
be more natural than the news that the
FBI is planning “a major expansion of a
national computerized file to distribute
information about people who are
considered suspicious but are not
wanted for crimes" ( New York Times. I
January). Just who is Big Brother
looking for? Drug traffickers, organized
crime, “terrorists” (that is. anybody
fitting the government's definition of
terrorism) More generally, anybody
who is "known to be. believed to be.
likely to be will set the red lights
flashing. To justify this major escalation

of the state’s repressive apparatus (“law
enforcement capabilities") comes a
mounting "terrorism” scare.

The 31 January Washington Post
features a “leaked” front-page story on a
new "crackdown" coming out of
Meese’s Justice Department. The article
says new anti-terrorism laws are “in the
final clearance stage at Justice." The
proposals would use the "conspiracy”
trap to go after U.S. citizens the
government says “support" terrorism.
(The West German government has
used the same legal strategy to viciously
prosecute lawyers who defend people

accused of terrorism.) The new laws
would create a kind of government
"bounty" for private investigators of
"terrorism" and would criminalize
financial support to targeted causes
The Washington Post article presents
as justification for the proposed repres-
sion laws a big blast of CIA black
propaganda worthy of Claire Sterling or
the “Spike” gang, the paper’s unnamed
“source" declares that “terrorism is a
growth industry abroad" and goes on to
demonstrate that disinformation is a
growth industry at home by dishing up
the whole nonsense list. Irom the

Bulgarian "pope plot" to allegations of
“60 major training camps" for terrorists
(the only terrorist named in the article is
the indispensable phantom “Carlos")
Back in the McCarthy days it was
"reds under the beds”; today, in Cold
War II. you're supposed to find Carlos
in the closet. So now, if you are known
to be. believed to be. likely to be or may
be on Ronald Reagan’s “enemies list."
you could be blown away in the night.

After the FBI announced its new
Domestic Security/Terrorism Guide-
lines last March, we published the
continual on page 2

Red Squad Meets “Blue Thunder”

LAPD Martial Law Olympics

l OS ANGELES — The Reagan govern-
ment's outcry against “terrorism" has as
its real object gearing up the bourgeois
state apparatus for witchhunting and
destruction of its political opponents.
Not far behind is the notorious Los
Angeles Police Department (LAPD)
The LAPD, working in close conjunc-
tion with the FBI. has seized on the
upcoming Olympic Games as a pretext
to virtually declare martial law. In
recent weeks the bourgeois authorities
have gone on a lull-scale dress rehearsal
for next summer, with everything from
sweeps through black areas in Pasadena
and South-Central Los Angeles to
search for weapons, to an incredible
"anti-terrorist" airport raid on LAX
where two dozen cab drivers were
rounded up as "illegal aliens."

Meanwhile, the city council is con-
sidering an ordinance to ban demon-

strations during the Games, while the
cops at the ritzy University of Southern
California campus, which adjoins the
Olympics site, have been granted special
powers to arrest for "probable cause."
Now any black seen on the USC campus
alter dark could easily wind up in jail —
or worse And that’s nothing yet: come
next summer, there will be 50 police
agencies beefed up by 16,000 private
cops crawling all over the I .A metro
area as part of "Operation Torchlight ’’
The L APD is not only undoubtedly
the best armed police force in the U.S .it
behaves as a semi-bonapartist paramili-
tary operation which lantasizes itself the
civilian equivalent of the Army Rangers
or 82nd Airborne. At the time ol Jimmy
Carter's failed mission to rescue the
hostages in Teheran. LAPDchiel Daryl
Gates was quoted “Gates said he stood
h\ his beliel that given proper logistical

support. 100 men from the Special
Weapons and Tactics Team (SWAT)
could rescue the hostages" ( Los Angeles
Tunes, 26 April 1980). The LAPD’s
targets, however, are not Shi’ite militia-
men armed with AK-47s. but the civilian
black population. For sheer cold-
blooded murder — from the murderous
choke holds which have claimed scores
of v ictims. to the horrendous slaying of
five-year-old black child Patrick Ma-
son. to the execution of black football
star Ron Settles — the racist police
departments in 1 A. and the surround-
ing towns have few equals.

Blue Thunder and the Olympics

So while the city fathers are drooling
over the money they expect to rake in
next summer, the black and Latin
populace is already bracing for an

Blue Thunder: fact or fiction?

intensification ol racist terror. The cops’
desires lor extraordinary powers for the
summer of 1984 — and beyond — was
dramatically portrayed in a recent
Hollywood movie. Blue Thunder. The
film, scripted well before serious prepar-
connnued on page 8

Fight the New McCarthyism !

The Partisan Defense Committee is
appealing to all of you for financial
help in fighting “McCarthyism with a
drawn gun." If there is a simple,
practical lesson to be drawn from the
terrible times of Senator Joe McCar-
thy, it is this: better to organize and
fight. When facing government set-up
and fascist provocation, it is time to
defend our rights and our lives with
every resource we can muster. The
PDC, founded on the principles of
class-struggle defense work, is raising
funds for the Spartacist League/
Spartacus Youth League lawsuit
against the FBI’s new "Domes-

tic Security/Terrorism Guidelines.”
These “Guidelines" are a mandate for
new COINTELPRO-type operations
of "disruption.” set-up and outright
murder against political opponents of
the government, targeting particularly
Marxist organizations and black
groups.

The deadly new McCarthyism flows
straight from the poisonous climate of
anti-Soviet war preparation and ram-
paging racist terror. As the witchhunt-
ers’ machinery is retooled. Marxists
and others are branded as “terrorists"
and violent criminals, as an excuse for
them to be shot first and questioned

later. The PDC calls on all those
concerned about civil liberties, on
black activists and defenders of black
people’s rights, on unionists and
socialists to take a stand in their own
defense by supporting the Spartacist
lawsuit against the FBI.

The PDC backed the SL lawsuit and
public campaign which in 1981 forced
the California Attorney General to
retract the characterization of the SL
as “terrorist" in his “Organized Crime”
report. Financial support raised by the
PDC helped build the Labor/Black
Mobilization of 5.000 which stopped
the Ku Klux Klan in Washington.

D C. on November 27, 1982. I he SL
and PDC are still raising money to pay
for the over $30,000 spent in the
successfully concluded campaign
which forced the Washington Times,
sinister daily newspaper of the Moonie
cult, to retract its libel of the Labor/
Black Mobilization and its organizers,
falsely portrayed as seeking violence
against the cops— a libel which fit right
in with the FBI "Guidelines" defining
Marxists as terrorist criminals.

The PDC is proud to have helped
secure these important victories for the
democratic rights of the working class
and the oppressed. We urge each of
you to do your part with a generous
contribution now. Send your contri-
bution to: Partisan Defense Commit-
tee. Box 99, Canal Street Station. New
York, NY 10013.

Reagan Needs
“Terrorism”...

(continued from page I)

following scenario:

“You are driving down a road one nighl
and get pulled over by the cops. A name
goes into the computer, and comes out
'terrorist'... 'member of a violent crimi-
nal enterprise.’ What happens then'’
Ask some Black Panther survivors of
the 1960s what it means to be tagged as a
terrorist by the feds."

—“FBI Red-Hunt." fFPNo.327.

8 April 1983

Just a horror story? It can’t happen here,
not to me? This is Reagan’s America:
this year “war is peace.” first-strike MX
missiles aimed at Russia are called
“peacekeepers," and political opponents
of the government are “terrorists.” The
U.S. sends a “peace" force of Marines
and battleships to Lebanon and infil-
trates fascistic mercenaries called "free-
dom fighters" into Nicaragua. In 1984
the real terrorists with state power,
armed with every available means of
destruction, are hunkered down in the
White House behind massive concrete
barriers crying, "The terrorists are

coming! The terrorists are coming!”

And now the man in charge of the
Cold War II witchhunt will be Reagan’s
new attorney general, Edwin Meese, the
man who laughs at hunger and one of
the ideologues of the new McCarthyism.
Meese participated in the nine-volume
Heritage Foundation report which calls
for a new era of “Un-American"
committees and for the active legal
legitimization of the COINTELPRO-
style operations: the breaking-and-
entering. the wiretaps, the provocateurs,
the whole gamut of murderous dirty
business that included shooting Black
Panther militants in their beds. As
deputy district attorney in Alameda
County, California Meese busted the
Berkeley Free Speech Movement in
1964; a decade later as Governor
Reagan’s chief of staff he ordered the
fiery immolation of the Symbionese
Liberation Army in a stormtrooper
assault by more than 300 L.A. cops.
Perhaps Meese, for whom soup lines are
just people cashing in on a free lunch,
will now discover that the hungry are
really terrorists in disguise.

The new anti-terrorism got into high
gear after the blowing up of U.S Marine
headquarters in Beirut last October 23.

The Reagan administration countered
with the Grenada invasion to divert
attention from its Lebanon fiasco, and
with the terrorism scare at home. We
have to close the truck-bomb gap, said
the Reaganites as they blocked White
House entrances with sand-filled dump
trucks. (When these were replaced by
"anti-terrorist planters," Reagan called
it “just normal security precautions.”)
Soon concrete highway dividers were
being placed in front of the Pentagon;
officials at the State Department no
longer wanted offices facing the street It
was made known that the Presidential
guard is equipped with “Stinger"
surface-to-air missiles, to defend against
air attacks.

Next to the terrorism scare, nothing
was sacred. Take the case of poor Mrs.
Rita Warren, who for years has set up
the Christmas nativity scene complete
with straw-filled manger on the Capitol
Building steps. This year she didn’t get
away unscathed, as the anti-terrorism
squad upended her large plastic figures
looking for god knows what inside
Mary, Joseph and the three wise men.
“Not the Baby Jesus," said Mrs.
Warren, noting that “It’s terrible for
Americans, this terrorism stuff" (New
York Times, 20 December 1983).

Nothing is lacking in the anti-
terrorism campaign except for the
terrorists. What has there really been in
the way of purported left-wing terrorism
in the last 20 years? A few really nasty
bombings — indiscriminate terror — by
the Puerto Rican nationalist FALN.
like the hideous Fraunces Tavern
bombing; a bloody incident at La
Guardia airport that no one took credit
for; a New Leftist bombing of an army
lab at the University of Wisconsin,
killing one; the famous West 1 1 th Street
townhouse bombing when some Weath-
ermen managed to blow themselves up.
Indeed the scare campaign would
benefit by a few more examples; since
the U.S government already funds and
directly or indirectly operates dozens of
shadowy right-wing groupings of vio-
lent emigre and domestic “ultras." it's
not hard to imagine a lucrative sideline
of “leff’-sounding provocations for
these sinister formations. What’s impor-
tant is the mood the rulers are trying to
create in this country, to justify in-
creased secret police spying, harass-
ment. disruption, sabotage, prosecution
and jailing of labor, left groups, black
militants and other perceived political
opponents.

Anti-Terrorism '84 has already pro-
duced its bizarre episodes. In Texas an
army general deep in debt decided to
commit suicide, attempting to pm the
deed on terrorists by leaving a note:
"Captured, tried, convicted of crimes by
the U .S. Army against the people of the
world. Sentenced and executed." An
American G.I in West Germany who
went AWOL after a quarrel with his
wife claimed he was kidnapped by
terrorists. But while the U.S. Navy
battle fleet off Lebanon is training for

defense against kamikaze attacks by
Iranian-piloted Piper Cubs, in a more
serious vein the city of Los Angeles is
preparing to decree a virtual state of
siege for the 1984 Summer Olympics
(see “LA PD Martial Law Olympics" in
this issue).

The Terror Times

Indeed the terrorism scare, for all its
overtones of low comedy, is no laughing
matter for any of its intended victims. It
has a sinister and deadly purpose: to
gear up America for war against the
Soviet “evil empire” and for a red-hunt
at home. The New York Times , a
newspaper and so much more than a
newspaper, has been leading the charge
with scare headlines: “U.S. Seems to Be
Target of New Strain of Terrorism" ( 13
December 1983), “Moynihan Sees Real
Threat of Bombings in U.S. in 1 984’’ ( 14
December), "Shadow of Terrorism
Falls Across the U.S." (18 December).
Since even the way the FBI counts,
terrorist incidents in the U.S. have
dropped, the Times has also practiced
the fine art of turning the lack of
credible menace into more grounds for
the scare campaign: “F B I. Head Says
Terrorism in U.S. Is Down but Fear
Rises” (15 December) and "Most U.S.
Cities Are Taking No Special Measures
to Curb Terrorism" (27 December). To
end the year came an extensive Times
survey, "State-Sponsored Terror Called
a Threat to U.S." (30 December).
Another article the same day reports
that, in addition to the traditional war
games, U.S. generals are now to be put
through “terrorism games.”

The top cops explain that terrorism
must be “stopped" before it starts, and
only better repression (“intelligence")
can do the job. And with a 43 percent
budget increase since Reagan took
office in 1981, the “Justice" Department
is the only government agency whose
expenditures have risen faster than
“Defense" (war). Key to this “law
enforcement" offensive are the new
Domestic Security/Terrorism Guide-
lines and the expanded functions of the
continued on page 6

Spartacist Forums

Black History
and the
Class Struggle

Speaker: Michael Haines

Spartacist League

Friday, February 10, 7:00 p.m.

I A Room

Michael Reed Learning Center
220 Champlain Street. N W

WASHINGTON, D.C.

Tuesday, February 14, 12:30 p.m.

Godwin University Center Ballroom
Norfolk State University

NORFOLK

For more information: (202 ) 636-3537

Terrorism and Communism

What we are concerned with is not at all
the defence of “terrorism" as such. Meth-
ods of compulsion and terrorisation down
to the physical extirpation of itsopponents
have up to now advantaged, and continue
to advantage in an infinitely higher degree
the cause of reaction, as represented by the
outworn exploiting classes, than they do
the cause of historical progress, as repre-

TROTSKV sented by the proletariat. The jury of
moralists who condemn “terrorism” of whatever kind have their gaze fixed really on
the revolutionary deeds of the persecuted who are seeking to set themselves free.

To-day the pious enemy of terrorism is keeping up by the help of organized
violence a “peaceful" system of unemployment, colonial oppression, armed forces
and preparation for fresh wars.

The present work, therefore, is far away from any thought of defending terrorism
in general. It champions the historical justification of the proletarian revolution. The
root idea of the book is this: that history down to now has not thought out any other
way of carrying mankind forward than that of setting up always the revolutionary
violence of the progressive class against the conservative violence of the outworn
classes.

— Leon Trotsky. Terrorism and Communism (1920)

WORKERS VANGUARD

Marxist Working-Class Biweekly of the Spartacist League of the U.S.

EDITOR Jan Norden

PRODUCTION MANAGER Noah Wilner

CIRCULATION MANAGER Darlene Kamiura

EDITORIAL 80ARD Jon Brule. Charles Burroughs, George Foster. Liz Gordon. James Robertson.
Reuben Samuels. Joseph Seymour. Marjorie Stamberg (Closing editor tor No 347 Liz Gordon)

Workers Vanguard (USPS 098-770) published biweekly skipping an issue in August and a week in December by
the Spartacist Publishing Co 41 Warren Street. New York NY 10007 Telephone 732-7862 (Editorial). 732-7861
(Business) Address all correspondence to Bo» 1377, GPO. New York NY 101 16 Domestic subscriptions $5 00/24
issues Second-class postage paid at New York. NY POSTMASTER Send address changes to Workers Vanguard.
Box 1377, GPO. New York NY 10116

Opinions etpressed m signed articles or letters do not necessarily express (he editorial viewpoint

No. 347 3 February 1984

LENIN

2

WORKERS VANGUARD

How Clfl and Church Smuggled Nazi War Criminals

The Vatican “Rat Line”

If it's Nazi war criminals you’re after,
a good rule of thumb is “look for the
pope." The Catholic church’s complicity
with fascist war crimes has been known
(and covered up) for years how Pius
XII turned a deaf ear to reports of
Hitler’s mass extermination of Jews
during World War II; how after the war
the church hierarchy helped fleeing SS
officials escape to Latin America.
Recently, as Nazi hunters have dug
deeper into the Barbie affair, docu-
menting how the Gestapo “Butcher ol
Lyons” was hired by U S. army intelli-
gence and later slipped into Bolivia, they
have pinpointed a Catholic priest as one
of the key links in the “rat line" which
funneled Nazis out of Europe. Last
week a top secret 1947 U.S. State
Department report was leaked to the
press which makes the Vatican Nazi
connection official.

The 26 January New York Times
revealed the existence of the 1947 report
by a Foreign Service officer in Rome.
Vincent La Vista, which “called the
Vatican ‘the largest single organization
involved in the illegal movement of
immigrants,’ including Nazis." The
report goes on to say that “in countries
where the church is a controlling or
dominating factor, the Vatican has
brought pressure to bear which has
resulted in the foreign missions of those
Latin American countries taking an
attitude almost favoring the entry into
their country of former Nazi and former
Fascists or other political groups, so
long as they are anti-Communists.”

La Vista listed the names of 22 clerics
linked to the illegal emigration. But the
key to the Nazi-smuggling operation
was reportedly the notorious Dr. [Willi]
Nix. As the New York Times quoted;
‘"After a very cautious investigation.’
the report went on, ‘this writer was able
to learn that several weeks ago. the
Italian Government after a secret
investigation, had ordered the arrest of
Dr. Nix.’ Yet. it went on. ‘only a matter
of minutes before Dr. Nix’s actual
apprehension, he was able to learn of his
imminent arrest and fled to the Vatican
where he is now residing. It has always
been suspected that Dr. Nix was

operating under the benevolent protec-
tion ol the Vatican His flight and
present sanctuary in Vatican City is
positive prool of this fact’ ”

The Times, which obtained the report
from Holocaust historian Charles I
Allen, confirmed its authenticity with
the U.S. National Archives.

I he 1947 State Department report
came to light in conjunction with the
current campaign by Paris-based Nazi
hunters Serge and Beate Klarsfeld to
extradite Nazi war criminal Walter
Rauff Irom his lair in Pinochet’s Chile.
Rauf!, a former SS colonel, was the in-
ventor and overseer of the mobile death
vans, the so-called "Black Ravens."
in which hundreds of thousands of
East European Jews were gassed Rauff
himself signed a secret report dated 5
July 1942 noting that since the previous
December “97.000 have been pro-
cessed." In the obscene tradition of
Adolf Eichmann, Rauff told a Chilean
court in 1962 that although “I helped
organize the truck service" which was
"used to produce death by asphyxia.” he
was only following “superior orders”!
After the bloody 1973 Santiago coup,
Rauff helped set up the infamous
DINA, Pinochet’s secret police respon-
sible for the torture and murder of
thousands of Chilean leftists. (Allende
never touched the past and future mass
murderer on the grounds that he didn’t
have the legal authority to do so! But
Rauff and Pinochet put their class
interests higher than capitalist legality.)

Rauff, together with Nazi “doctor"
Josef Mengele, believed to be living in
Paraguay, is one of the most wanted
Nazi war criminals still at large. As a
result of increasing publicity, Israel,
which has excellent military/diplomatic
relations with the Chilean dictatorship
and has known of Rauff’s whereabouts
for years and done nothing about it,
now has finally been induced to request
his extradition. In his 1962 report to the
Chilean court, SS killer Rauff testified
how after his arrest by American troops
he escaped and with the aid of the
Vatican relocated himself and his

family. "I was helped by a Catholic
priest to go to Rome where I stayed
more or less 18 months, always in
convents of the Holy See." Rauf! said.
"With the help ol the Catholic Church,
my family was able to escape from the
Russian-occupied zone in Germany and
come to Rome."

While pointing to the Vatican
connection, the Times article went out

UPl

Santiago, Chile— Nazi hunter Beate
Klarsfeld demands extradition of SS
mass murderer Walter Rauff.

of its way to insist that “Mr. Klarsfeld
said he did not think that the Pope at the
time, Pius XII, was aware Mr. Rauff
had been given refuge in Vatican-
connected facilities." If the pope didn’t
know, it would only be because at the
time he had even bigger Nazis to hide. It
was Pius XII himself who set the
church’s stand on the Nazis. German
playwright Rolf Hochhuth in 1963 pub-
lished the play, "The Deputy," expos-
ing the pope’s complicity in the Holo-
caust. When the church objected.
Hochhuth fired back an historical
memorandum detailing Vatican knowl-
edge of the genocidal action of the Nazi
extermination machine from 1941 on.
We wrote in our article, “Polish Pope

Can’t Wash Hands of Auschwitz.
Pilgrimage for Anti-Communism." WV
No. 234. 22 June 1979:

“I he papacy kept silent lor over nine
months in 1 943 while the Nazis shipped
over 1.000 Roman Jews to Auschwitz —
many grabbed in the very shadow of the
Vatican itself. Above all. because of
its fear of communism, the church
supported the Nazis and fervently
backed the crusade against godless
Bolshevism."

The State Department’s 1947 report
said the Vatican justified Nazi-
smuggling to "infiltrate” European and
Latin American countries with people
whose views were “anti-communist"
and “pro-Catholic Church," U.S. intelli-
gence used the same rationale to justify
the fact that it took over the Nazi anti-
Soviet spy network, the Gchlen organi-
zation. virtually intact after the war,
removed entire East Europe Einsatz-
gruppen of pro-Nazi killers to safety in
the U.S., and staffed its Radio Free
Europe with erstwhile fascists-turned-
“democrats.” The most recently re-
vealed examples. Barbie and Belgian SS
officer Robert Jan Verbelen. are only a
couple of the thousands of Nazi war
criminals who continued their murder-
ous anti-Communist work after the war
while easily switching their allegiances
from Hitler’s Third Reich to the U.S.
imperialist-dominated Free World. The
Soviet Union, in contrast, thoroughly
rooted out the fascist killers. We
demand that Walter Rauff be handed
over to the USSR, which has requested
his extradition for years, so that he can
be brought to justice before a tribunal of
his surviving victims!

Pope John Paul Wojtyla has made it
his mission to galvanize the Catholic
church as the spearhead of the anti-
Soviet crusade. Under Pius XII it
certainly played that role during Cold
War I. as Catholic Action was the
cutting edge of anti-Communist purges
in the labor movement both in Europe
and America. This was the same
purpose behind the church’s inspiration
of the clerical-reactionary dominated
Solidamosc “union." whose counterrev-
olutionary bid for power in Poland was
spiked at the last minute on 13 Decem-
ber 1981. The church’s allegiance can be
seen clearly in Chile today. While it
helped Nazi butcher Walter Rauff to
escape ultimately to provide “technical
advice" to the DINA killers, last week
when Chilean MIR leaders sought
refuge from Pinochet’s secret police at
the papal nunciatura, they were told
there was no room in Vatican City. ■

Another Lynch Trial Set for Worrie Taylor

Stop Racist Vendetta Against the Taylor Family!

Lillie Bell
Taylor and
Worrie Taylor
in Montgomery
court.

February 27 marks a year since the
Taylor family from Michigan and
Ohio gathered in Alabama to mourn
the death of Mrs. Annie Bell Taylor.
Montgomery mayor Emory Folmar is
trying to finish the job in the
courtroom that his dogs of war started
that night when, with guns drawn and
shouting racist slurs, plainclothes cops
burst into the Taylor family home on
Todd Road. But for their courageous
self-defense against the marauders the
Taylors would not be alive to tell about
the assault today. The slate couldn’t
make its monstrous frame-up charges
stick last November against the first
member of this victimized black family
to stand trial. So now the legal
lynching of Worrie Taylor resumes
with his retrial in Montgomery Circuit
Court on February 6.

Once again Worrie Taylor must sit
across a narrow table from the armed
intruders who would have destroyed
his family had not the Taylors dis-
armed the cops. The state means to
make the Taylors pay for their "crime"
of exercising their legitimate right
to self-defense. Folmar and the Mont-

gomery police department are defend-
ing a way of life no less than the slave
patrols of the Confederacy. Last
November D.A. Evans asked in his
summary, "If you break into my home.
I’ll kill you. Is that the message you
want to send out of this community?"
When 150 black people in the court-
room replied "yes." it sent shivers
down the racists’ spines.

Worrie Taylor. 49. was temporarily
reprieved by a hung jury last
November 27. But they cannot stand
to let him go. They know they must get
a conviction before they can move on
to try four other members of the
Taylor family also facing charges
which could put them away for 20
years in the hellhole of Alabama state
prison. Montgomery blacks are just as
aware that this vicious frame-up must
be defeated. Despite the presence of
virtually the entire police force in the
courtroom last November, hundreds
of black people jammed the court-
room. In the North, hundreds of
supporters have come out to black
church rallies in Pontiac. Michigan
and Warren. Ohio, l.ast fall 139

Detroit area unionists, laborand black
leaders, principally UAW workers at
Ford’s River Rouge, signed an urgent
telegram demanding “No Extradition
of Chris Taylor!" They know that the
lives of these Northern black workers
are at stake at the hands of Alabama-
style lynch-law "justice." This con-

sciousness must be mobilized in
massive protest actions. North and
South, of support for the Taylors to
keep the racist thugs at bay. Drop the
charges against the Taylors! No
extradition of Chris Taylor! Jail the
racist cops! A million dollars compen-
sation to the persecuted Taylors!

3 FEBRUARY 1984

3

standing in (Goobic’s) blood, it was

really upsetting They came back with

tears in their eyes. They said he was just
standing there, staringdown the strikers
with his arms crossed and his feet in the
blood.” The killer, 51-year-old Robert
Earl Carper, was booked only on
vehicular (involuntary) manslaughter
charges and released on $3,000 bail. We
say: Scab Carper is guilty of murder —
Lock him up for good!

The tragic death of young Gregory
Goobic follows an escalating pattern of
company violence against strikers at
Union Oil (where another picketer
suffered leg injuries when he was struck
by a company security guard’s car), in
the Bay Area and nationally. Demon-
strators took hundreds of Workers
Vanguard supplements to read about
the case of Ray Palmiero and Lauren
Mozee. the two telephone strikers lacing
four-year prison terms for the "crime” of
self-defense against a racist manager’s
assault on a CWA picket line in San
Leandro, California last August.

One rally speaker, ILWU Local 6
president Al Lannon, cited the shooting
deaths of two strikers that sparked the
1934 San Francisco general strike and
also recalled the 1976 killing of a Localb
member on the Handyman picket line.

hall to plan for another demonstration
February 6. Many union members were
angry and frustrated. One worker who
trained on the job with Goobic bitterly
remarked. "A man lost his life, and the
refinery’s still open and running. Noth-
ing’s changed."

Nationally, all the oil companies'
union contracts expired January 7. but
they were extended under the union’s
scheme of "pattern bargaining” on a
onc-company-at-a-time basis where the
others supposedly follow the terms of
the first settlement. In fact this has the
effect of chopping up the striking
strength of the workforce. Despite the
fact that the profit-bloated oil compa-
nies have one of the lowest laborcosts in
relation to profits of all major indus-
tries, this year oil companies are
refusing to go along with the Gulf Oil
"pattern” because they think they can
get on the "concessions” bandwagon.
And. unlike the auto industry and most
others, where the majority of issues are
settled on the national level, in oil the
reverse is true. So not only are the oil
workers divided up company by com-
pany, but even local by local. Thus the
Union Oil workers in Rodeo are fighting
over a completely different local agree-
ment than their striking brothers and
sisters in Union Oil in Wilmington,
California, near Los Angeles. For an
industrywide strike of all oil workers!

Strikers in the heavily automated
refineries traditionally face the fact of
scab/managers maintaining high levels
of production. Powerful class-struggle
weapons like plant occupations and sit-
down strikes are necessary to bring to
heel the arrogant oil companies. This
must be backed up by real labor
solidarity from other unions. Workers
in maritime, trucking, all unionized
workers who are involved in transport,
must refuse to handle struck oil!

The speaker from the Greyhound
drivers union left the meeting of labor
officials shaking his head in frustration,
saying, “They just don’t understand.”
But in fact the union bureaucrats do
understand: they have an "understand-
ing” that the capitalists have a “right" to
own industry and exploit labor; the
bosses’ government has a “right" to tie
labor’s hands; and labor should “right-
fully" subordinate itself to the bosses’
politicians in the Democratic and
Republican parties. Their conciliation-
ism has been paid for in the members’
blood, and the illusions they build in
labor/management cooperation have
been proven again to be literally fatal
illusions.

The pro-capitalist labor bureaucracy
must be dumped and the anti-union tide
reversed with a new leadership of labor
committed to class struggle. Labor must
break with the twin parties of capital.
Democrat and Republican, and build a
workers party fighting for a workers
government. Profit-bloated and price-
gouging Big Oil, above all industries, is
overripe for expropriation. Gregory
Goobic and all of labor’s martyrs will be
avenged when the ruling class that killed
them is replaced by a workers govern-
ment running society and producing for
the benefit of the whole population and
not the profits of the few. ■

Grt^c-ry

Gocbi» 1

Another spoke of Randy Hill, the
Teamster killed by a scab driver in
nearby Vacaville in 1978. Mike Kir-
chanski of ATU Local 1225 referred to
Ray Phillips, the Ohio picket captain
killed by a scab driver during the recent
Greyhound strike. Kirchanski also
addressed the main issue in the strike,
the so-called "two-tiered" wage system
where a lower wage is instituted for new
hires or anyone transferred into a
different job classification, amounting
to a 40 percent wage cut. “Greyhound
gave it to us; they’re going to try to give
it to you. Don’t take it! It’s the end of
your union, the end of your ability to
stay unified!"

Other union officials from OCAW
and the Central Labor Council spoke
about how the attack on Union Oil
workers began with the defeat of the
PATCO air controllers union, and
blamed Goobic’s death on the anti-labor
climate fomented by labor-hater Rea-
gan. But aside from impotent gestures of
a personal consumer boycott (“I'm
throwing away my Union 76 credit card
until this strike is over") and vague
promises to send (a few) members from
other locals to walk the picket lines, the
piecards who show up for such rallies to
proclaim their "solidarity” have no
program for winning strikes. Cowed by
the threat of injunctions from the
bosses’ courts limiting the number of
pickets, and fearing the mobilized might
of their own membership, the bureau-
crats do the bosses’ own work in keeping
the picket lines small and ineffectual
They oppose the action needed to win:
mass picketing to stop all traffic in and

Black armbands placed al site of
anti-labor murder.

out of the plant. The picket line is the
battle line where strikes stand or fall.
Labor must fight to re-establish in
practice that picket lines mean you
better not cross!

Contra Costa oil workers are no
strangers to the picket line. There were
veterans of the 1948 Union Oil strike at
today’s march. Many strikers recalled
the 76-day strike of 1980 and said they
felt the gains won then are being stolen
back now. There were speakers from
OCAW Local 1-5 (Chevron) who won
bitter picket line battles with the support
of other unions in Richmond in 1969.

But far from learning the lessons of
how to win a strike, OCAW leaders have
agreed to a company-dictated set of
“ground rules” for picketing that guar-
antee scabbing! In exchange for the
union’s guarantee of safe passage for all
scab vehicles and occupants, this is what
the union got: “We were given assur-
ances by management that traffic would
stop and give pickets an opportunity to
present their case in an attempt to turn
people around, or let them go through if
unsuccessful. Picket captains were
reassured. Management said all vehicles
would stop," said local recording
secretary John Billecci ( Oakland Trib-
une, 21 January). But the scab killer
didn’t stop, Gregory Goobic is now
dead, and the scabbing goes on.

At the end of today’s march and rally
a memorial wreath was fastened to a
sign in the intersection where Greg died,
and unionists tied their black armbands
of mourning to a nearby fence. The
demonstrators were then sent home
while union officials went back to the

Scab Kills Picket in Bay Area OCAW Strike

OAKLAND, January 25 — Over 500
unionists from more than a dozen union
locals marched today in poignant
silence from the small OCAW (Oil,
Chemical and Atomic Workers) Local
1-326 union hall in Rodeo, California to
the Union 76 oil refinery where 330
workers have been out on strike against
company takebacks since January 17.
The workers mobilized in protest and
outrage against the January 20 murder
of their fellow unionist and well-liked
coworker, 20-year-old Gregory Goobic.
Goobic was killed instantly when the
scab driver of an 1 8-wheeler accelerated
into Goobic and Paul Griffith, the 19-
year-old black union member on picket
duty with him that night. Griffith said
the scab “went for both of us. I barely
jumped out of the way" ( Contra Costa
Times, 20 January).

Two hours later, Goobic’s body still
lay on the ground behind a line thrown
up by the police, his hat and fallen picket
sign on the ground and his bicycle
parked nearby. Though his union
brothers and even his weeping parents
(except for a brief look) were kept back
from the body, a company boss was
allowed in close enough to stand
gloating in Goobic’s blood. Union
secretary John Billecci said, “When (the
strikers) saw the refinery manager

Rodeo, California, January 25— Over 500 Bay Area unionists march in outrage over scab murder of striking oil worker

Oakland Tribune

Gregory Goobic

Strike Update

The OCAW strike at Rodeo and
Wilmington. California ended Jan-
uary 30. The wage terms follow the
rotten Gulf Oil pattern (increases of
less than 2 percent a year, which in
many locals have been totally offset
by large increases in employee-paid
insurance costs). Although Union
76 did not get the full-blown two-
tier wage structure it sought, the
sellout deal included several further
concessions, such as a wage freeze
for lower-paid workers, a new
laborer’s classification exempted
from union wage levels, and lesser
pay for trainees.

Avenge Labor Martyr

Gregory Goobic!

4

WORKERS VANGUARD

Donkey Work for the Democrats

CWP Caboose on the
Jesse Jackson Train

UPI

Jesse Jackson is the shill in Walter Mondale’s crooked game.

“You cannot serve the age of those
who sat in. you cannot serve the age
of those who rode the flaming
buses, you cannot serve the age of
those who fought the Vietnam
War

“We need not explode through
riots as we had to in '63 to be

heard We can use the ballot to

bring about change and transition
through elections and not bloody
revolution."

Thus speaks the Reverend Jesse
Jackson. Among his converts can be
counted the ex-radicals who populate
the reformist American left. From the
Communist Party to Workers World to
the Communist Workers Party, Jack-
son’s campaign for the Democratic
Party presidential nomination has been
hailed as a symbol of "resistance" and
"unity" for all good progressive people.
When Jackson preaches to the angry
and hideously oppressed black people of
this country, “There’s a freedom train
a cornin’, but you got to register to ride."
these fake-lefts respond with “Amen."
That Jackson is Mr. Black Capitalism

himself — Coca-Cola’s man in the
ghetto — that he is a strikebreaker, a
purveyor of chauvinist "protectionism''
and an anti-Soviet “patriot" who is
hustling black votes for the party of
George Wallace presents no problem of
"principle" for the reformists. The more
practiced sellouts simply assume that
support to the black front man for
Walter “Fritz” Mondale’s race against
Reagan is the correct “communist"
thing to do. After all. the Communist
Party has been electorally supporting
the class enemy for over 40 years. (And
look where it’s gotten them — nowhere).

The ex-Maoist Communist Workers
Party (CWP) is having a rougher go in
justifying their overt support to Jack-
son. A national tour this fall by CWP
leader Phil Thompson seemed mainly
pitched at lining up the CWP member-
ship. Kicking off the tour at Laney
College in Oakland, Thompson re-
marked. "A year ago. . . if you had told
us that we would be sitting here
discussing the Jesse Jackson presiden-
tial campaign, we would have thought
you were crazy." What has changed'.'

“Tens of thousands of people are getting
involved" and “if the masses of people
are around Jesse Jackson that’s where
we have to be." In other words, if J.J.
can hustle the black vote bysellingthem
a bill of goods, these pseudo-socialists
want to get rich quick by feeding the
illusions. Hungry? Jobless? Illiterate?
Ghettoized? The CWP’s program for
black America is: let them eat lies.

The CWP wants to get “in on the
ground floor ofwhat is becominga mass
movement for Black political power.”
Since when has the Democratic Party
had anything to do with black political
power? As Malcolm X put it in 1964:
“When you keep the Democrats in

power, you're keeping the Dixiecrats in
power.” In fact, selling your political
soul to the racist Democratic Party
means betraying the aspirations and
struggles of black people in the most
crass ways. The CWP is for that reason
quite touchy about Jackson’s well-
publicized glad-handing of George
"Segregation Forever” Wallace. As
Thompson writes in his article on
support to Jackson (The Eighties, Fall
1983):

"A wholly obnoxious and useless poster
was printed by the African Peoples
Socialist Party showing a picture of
Jesse Jackson shaking hands with

continued on page 10

On Jesse Jackson’s Campaign

Some People Are
Just Waiting in Line
To Be Hustled

By Cliff Carter

Cliff Carter, a black trade unionist, is
a frequent guest contributor to Workers
Vanguard.

Jesse Jackson is making all kinds of
promises about what he is going to do.
but his promises are impossible for him
to fulfill simply because he doesn't have
a program to implement any promises.
Jesse Jackson is an all-star between the
nose and chin.

Jesse Jackson, the politician, will talk
and make all kinds of promises the same
as Jesse Jackson the preacher will make
promises about sending souls to heav-
en. for the only, only way you can go to
Jesse’s heaven is to die. And the only
way you can get what Jesse the politi-
cian promises is to die trying, so either
way Jesse's rewards are after death.

Jesse Jackson or any other Democrat
(or Republican) cannot give the people
one thin dime unless Big Business (the
owners of the factories, mines, compa-
nies and etc.) gives him permission. The
Democratic Party just doesn’t have a
program to do right for the workers of
the United States, and Jesse "James"
Jackson is certainly a part of the
Democratic Party. Jesse is nothing but a

UPI

J.J. glad-hands George “Segrega-
tion Forever" Wallace.

puppet witha big mouth. and thiscanbe
said about any other capitalist nominee
running for the Democratic or Republi-
can Party to be president.

The last presidents were nothing but
puppets. Nixon, Ford, Carter and so is
Ronald "Wrinkles" Reagan. So Jackson
and all the other nominees cannot be
anything other than potential puppets.
And if you want to “mess up" a puppet
show (Jesse Jackson), just go after or
stop the puppeteer (Big Business).

It is a crying shame that Jesse James
Jackson has a large majority of college
and university students believing that he
is capable of changing things in the
country.

Sometime in August 1983. 1 predicted
that Jesse Jackson would not run for
president, simply because the Demo-
cratic Party only needed Jackson to get
people to register to vote, mainly black
people But the Democratic Party feels
as though more blacks will register and
vote if “Mister Goodie Two Shoes"
Jesse James Jackson is in the presiden-
tial running. But now my prediction is.
after the Democratic Party feels all the
blacks are registered to vote and
potential Democratic voters. Jackson
will come up with some cock and bull
story to drop out of the presidential
race.

Jesse Jackson is a sophisticated house
negro w ith a new suit of clothes, top hat
and all. Jackson is letting his mouth
write checks that his behind cannot cash
and he knows this to be true But. too. a
puppet will onl> dance when his/her

strings are pulled.

What the workers need is a Workers
Party which is independent of the
Democratic and Republican Parties.

Jesse Jackson is a professional hustler
with a crooked deck of cards sitting at a
game with all the chairs filled and people
waiting in line to be hustled. Jesse
Jackson went to Alabama and broke
bread with George (Segregation For-
ever) Wallace if nothingelse but to show
he is a good house negro from another
plantation.

Jackson is a member of the Demo-
cratic Party, and if you asked him to
separate from the capitalistic system
and form a Workers Party independent
of the Democratic and Republican
Parties, poor Jesse would have a fit.
Jesse would say the same words as when
the house negro was asked by the field
negro to run away from the plantation:
“Where could I get a better job. where
could 1 get better food to eat. where
could I gel better clothes to wear and a
place like this to stay, man you must be
crazy.” Jesse is eating good, wearing
good clothes and sleeping just fine and
he isn’t about to change parties where he
would have to oppose the capitalistic
system which the Democratic and
Republican Parties are members of.
Poor Jesse would have all kinds of
people and groups against him. and too.
the Ku Klux Klan would hate Jesse
Jesse must be pro-Klan. lor the Klan has
proposed to march in any number of
cities in (he last couple of years and Mr.
Jackson hasn’t shown up at the spot to

stop them yet. How about this Jesse?

Jesse Jackson says he is going to make
some changes if he becomes president,
and I say to Jesse that he is lull of junk,
because the only way these changes can
be made is start a revolution and Sweet
Jesse wouldn't last three minutes as a
revolutionary He would break out in a
cold sweat and crawl on his hands and
knees back to the Democratic Party. To
make changes in the United States (and
the whole world) you must have a
program, and to make this program
work, you must be willing to do some
hard and difficult work. Jesse boy.

Jesse James Jackson is anti-trade
unions and anti-anybody who is against
the Democratic Party.

On December 4, 1983, Lieutenant
Robert O. Goodman Jr., a bombardier,
was captured by Syrian forces when his
plane was shot down during a 28-plane
United States air strike against Syrian
anti-aircraft positions west of Beirut.
Lebanon Jesse Jackson formed a
delegation of clergymen and campaign
aides, went to Syria and had a meeting
with Syrian President Hafez Assad and
on or about January 3. 1984. Lt.
Goodman was released to return with
Jackson and delegation back to the
United States.

This release of Goodman by Jackson
and delegation made front page in
newspapers around the country, but
until Jackson and his delegation of
clergymen go into the prisons of the
United States and give support and
voice his opinion concerning all the
poor working people that have been
wronged (black and white, but especial-
ly black), that are victims of this racist
capitalist system, then he and company
haven't done anything to shout about

The Democratic Party, and Republi-
can too. have sold the working people
dow n the river long enough for us to see
that there isn’t any good coming from
these two Parlies. But sweet words
coming out of Jesse "All Star Lip"
Jackson such as "1 am going to feed
everybody" are a whole lot of Bullshit
and Jesse knows this to be true. What we
need is a Workers Party to take control
of working people’s needs. ■

3 FEBRUARY 1984

5

Reagan Needs
“Terrorism”...

(continued from page 2)

FBI’s National Crime Information Cen-
ter (NCIC), hooked into virtually every
cop computer in the U.S. 1 heir data: not
crimes or acts, but in FBI chief Web-
ster’s words, testifying before Congress
in 19X2. “What you have is a smell’’
(quoted in Nat Hcntoff. “The Devil and
William Webster,” Inquiry. June 19X3).

To Webster's sense of smell, there’s
just one big terrorist group out there,
which he connects up by sniffing out
"similarities of technique and rhetoric"
(New York Tunes. 27 December 19X3,
our emphasis). Webster's special assis-
tant John B Hotis explained how "With
the new guidelines we look at people not
lust directly involved in violence." So it’s
back to the old Big Brother McCarthy
days of creating and prosecuting
thought-crimes and speech-crimes
("advocacy"), with this difference: the
Cold War ideological criteria of the '50s
are to be combined with the direct
COINTEl PRO-type hit-squad meth-
ods of the ’60s. The speech-crimes are
equated with “terrorism" and the cop
agencies are to behave accordingly, we
have called this "McCarthyism with a
drawn gun." The government recog-
nizes only two categories of political
opponents: either you're a priest or
professor who writes a letter to the New
York Times suggesting that the Salva-
doran butchers ought to get a lower
grade on their “human rights" report
card, or else you’re some kind of
terrorist.

One of the more simsteraspects of the
FBI’s computer witchhunt is its use of
the Secret Service list of "dangerous
persons." This is the first instance of
NCIC official monitoring of "political”
as opposed to "criminal” subjects. The
Secret Service list gets around the 1974
Privacy Act (which says surveillance
must be based on bona fide crimes) by
claiming the need to track people
potentially dangerous to the protectee.
(Of course the Nazi-cultist Hinckley
who shot Reagan was not on the list.)
This lays the basis for a computerized
ideological hit list.

"Files," observes Frank Donner in
The Age oj Surveillance, “are the
cornerstone of all domestic political
intelligence systems":

"The mere lact that information
appears in a file in itself becomes a
warrant ol its truth and accuracy,
automatically raising it above the level
of its source, however dubious it might
otherwise be [files] ‘document’ the
intelligence thesis that dissent is a form
of political original sin. permanent,
incurable, and contagious, and impose
on the political lilc of the individual a
‘record’ that he cannot change.

Americans don’t much like the police-
state methods of the FBI. And particu-
larly after U.S. imperialism was defeat-
ed in Vietnam, in the post-Watergate
exposures tens of thousands of Ameri-
cans learned they had become “subjects”
in FBI files such as the “Stop Index”
because of legal antiwar or civil rights
activities. The “Stop Index” of 44,000
“subjects” was sent directly to the Secret

cowuNfiyfixincAt

E(XK>™

Service. These exposures led to the
Privacy Act and Freedom of Informa-
tion Act ( FOI A). Under that climate of
opinion, the secret police claimed to
have dismantled files like the "Stop
Index " But the FBI has maintained files
on those deemed “subversive" for
decades When the old “Security Index"
of the 1950s (which designated its
"subjects” for concentration camps)
was “dismantled." it was resurrected
phoenix-like as the "ADEX File."
Among the organizations targeted for
“special attention” in the ADEX File is
the "SPL — Spartacist League.” ADEX
was supposedly abolished in 1974. but
like others we have documentary
proof — in the ultra-expurgated FOIA
files on SL national chairman James
Robertson — that the ADEX was still in
operation long after its “abolition," and
his name was sent to the Secret Service
as a "dangerous person ” Indeed the FBI
has made it quite clear that they do not
destroy files "related to subversive,
terrorist, or extremist activities" and
such hit lists remain "readily retriev-
able." Why should anyone believe the
new FBI Guidelines will not continue
this practice, creating a new “Stop
Index" or ADEX list for the COINTEl -
PRO computer?

State-Supported Terrorism:
Made in USA

“International terrorism will take the
place of human rights as the chief
concern of U.S. foreign policy." de-
clared General Alexander Haig three
years ago in his first speech as Reagan’s
secretary of state. In late 19X1 the White
House practically declared a state of
emergency over a mythical Libyan “hit
squad” coming to get the president. By
adopting the "international terrorism"
vocabulary (the Soviet Union is the
“sourceof allevil."and everyoneelse the
U.S. doesn’t like, the Libyans for
example, become "Soviet surrogates”),
the Reagan gang has taken a leaf from
the Israelis’ book. For the Zionists all
Palestinians are "terrorists" and. in
Begin’s words, “two-legged beasts" to be
destroyed without pity. So when the
U.S. government labels Soviet leaders
“terrorists" it intends to deal with them
like Begin/Shamir want to deal with the
Palestinians: to wipe them off the face of

Spartacist League / Spartacus Youth League Forum

U.S. Hands Off the World!

Reagan Is War Crazy! Defend the Soviet Union!

Speaker: Tweet Carter, SL Central Committee

Saturday, February 4
7:30 p.m.

Hyde Park Hilton

4900 South Lake Shore Dr

For more inlormation
(312) 427-0003

CHICAGO

Saturday, February 11
7:30 p.m.

Cleveland State University
University Center, Rm 110

For more information
(216) 621-5138

CLEVELAND

Sunday, February 12
7:30 p.m.

Oberlm College
Wilder Hall, YW Lounge

For more information
(216) 775-5839

OBERLIN

Bullet-riddled
apartment of
Black Panther
leader Fred
Flampton,
murdered by
FBI/Chicago
red squad
in 1969.

the earth Fortunately for the future ol
mankind, the Soviets have the where-
withal to defend themselves against the
madmen in Washington

I he Reagamte version ol the Soviet
Union is straight out of James Bond
fantasy. When a right-wing Turkish
Islamic fanatic shot the pope. Claire
Sterling et al. claimed that Yuri Andro-
pov was the man behind the man with
the gun in Vatican Square. State
Department disinformation mills ran
overtime charging the Russians with
dropping deadly chemical “yellow rain"
on the populations of l.aos. Cambodia
and Afghanistan. When a top U.S.
scientist — formerly a consultant to the
State Department and Pentagon —
reported that “yellow rain" was actually
bee excrement, he became a purported
Soviet “dupe."

What's really happened is that the
Yanks have suddenly discovered, in
their all-out drive to reassert themselves
as global gendarmes (and especially

violations."

The real force for state-supported
international terrorism in this world is
of course the American imperialist
ruling class. More than 200 innocent
people died when Korean Air Lines
Flight 007 was sent over sensitive Soviet
military installations in a Cold War
provocation engineered by U.S. spy
agencies I hey use anyone for their dirty
jobs— Nazis. Mafia, international drug
rings, mercenaries and gusanos. From
the carpet-bombing and napaiming of
Indochinese women and children to
arming the death squad regimes of
Central America, the professional tor-
turers and architects of mass murder
have behind them the force and finances
ol U.S. imperialism Contrast the fire-
power ol the USS New Jersey with that
ol a booby-trapped Mercedes truck! As
always, the strong light the weak one
way. while the weaker forces light the
strong another way— typically using the
element of surprise and surreptitious-
ness. In the eyes of the strong, these
tactics are "crazy." “immoral." “terror-
istic.” For the bourgeoisie, “terrorism"
is violence associated with causes of
which they disapprove, the use of force
outside their own monopoly of \ lolence
strikers defending their picket lines,
black people protecting their communi-
ties against racist nightriders. Central
American peasants fighting back
against the landlords’ army and hired
killers.

Fight the New McCarthyism!

The physical destruction and asso-
ciated political implosion of the Black
Panther Party demonstrated in gunfire
and blood how the state comes after
those tagged as terrorists. So we knew-
how dangerous it was when in I9XI we
discovered our Marxist organization
included on a list of left-wing “terror-
ists." “a dangerous faction with which
law enforcement would have to deal."

Oakland cops’
high-tech
weapon has
gun mount, can
fire tear-gas
cannisters.

after the Beirut bombing), that they are
vulnerable. “Terrorism" has come to be
synonymous with any reasonably effec-
tive assault, or with simple militant
opposition. If Arab kids throw rocks,
that’s “terrorism"; if Israeli troops level
a \ illage. that’s a legitimate government
administering "law and order."

There arc some terrorist groups
operating in this country — the right-
wing ultras: Croatian fascists who plant
bombs in airports; anti-Castro Cuban
gusanos who regularly attempt to
assassinate Cuban diplomats and did
murder former Chilean ambassador
Orlando I etelier in Washington. DC;
the Jewish Defense l eague which
targets Russian embassies and airline
offices. And America's got its native
lascists. the Ku Klux Klan and home-
grown Hitlerites, In 1979. Klan/Nazi
terrorists opened fire on an anti-racist
demonstration in Greensboro. North
Carolina, killing five supporters ol the
Communist Workers Party. The fascist
killers were acquitted of murder by the
courts; now the ledcral government is
staging a cover-up trial with anotherall-
white jury on charges of “civil rights

The list, issued by George Deukmejian.
then the attorney general of California,
was a pioneering effort in slandering
Marxists as terrorists. It was none other
than Edwin Meese who braintrusted
this “report" setting up leftists for cop
terror while at the same time preparing
to use against Marxist groups new legal
weapons like the anti-“racketeering"
RICO laws To fight this branding of us
as outlaws, we sued witchhunter
Deukmejian — and we won. The SL was
removed from the hit list and Deukmeji-
an’s office had to send the retraction to
cop agencies across the country. “Marx-
ists Not Mobsters" was the headline the
San Francisco Examiner used to sum up
this early victory against the govern-
ment’s new red-hunt.

A Spartacist supporter had earlier
won another important victory against
"terrorisf’-baiting. Jane Margolis was
an elected delegate to the 1979 national
convention of the Communications
Workers of America. When President
Jimmy Carter came to address the
convention, his Secret Service grabbed
Jane right oil the convention floor,
handcuffed her and held her incommu-

6

WORKERS VANGUARD

nicado. To prevent her from taking the
floor as a delegate to voice her political
opposition, the Secret Service treated
Margolis as if she were a physical threat
to the president. But a union-centered
campaign, including a lawsuit, by the
Union Committee Against Secret Serv-
ice Harassment, forced the Secret
Service to publicly apologize and hand
over $3,000 which Margolis donated to
the union defense fund Now the Secret
Service has added its own hit list to the
FBI’s Big Brother computer

last month the Spartacist l eague
secured another very important victory
against the witchhunicrs by forcing a

Pyramid of “terrorism”— A 1976 Cal-
ifornia “report" on “organized crime"
included this diagram, "a concep-
tual organization model of contem-
porary urban terrorist groups.” In
this witchhunters’ fantasy, left-wing
groups function to link the “issue-
oriented” do-gooders at the base to
the more “committed" forces who
practice violent crimes; the ultimate
in “commitment” is portrayed as
"revolutionary” suicide.

retraction of “libel that kills” from the
Moonie-operated daily, Washington
Times (see “SL/SYL Vindicated —
Moonies Forced to Retract Deadly
Libel.” WV No. 345, 6 January). The
Moonies had targeted the Spartacists —
falsely charging us with seeking to
provoke violence against the police —
after we initiated and organized the
massive Labor/ Black Mobilization
which stopped the Ku Klux Klan in
Washington on 27 November 1982. The
Moonies' grotesque lies portraying us as
a violence-crazed paramilitary outfit fit
in perfectly with the government's
terror-smear tactics. The FBI can file
lying newspaper stories on suspected
"terrorists,” give the lies the "authority"
of the FBI. build up a fat file on the
“subjects.” zip it all around on the
computer and ...the cops have reason
and excuse to blow the “terrorists”
away.

Our successful lawsuit, forcing the
Washington Times to publish a retrac-
tion. was a victory for the Spartacist
League, for the 5.000 mainly black
protesters w ho stopped the Klan and for
all the many others who have hailed this
anti-racist mobilization, the largest and
most militant anti-fascist action in this
country in many years. And it struck an
important blow at one of the most rabid,
lying anti-Communist outfits in Ameri-
ca The Moonies advertise their daily as
“the newspaper Moscow hates.” and
you can be sure the Washington Times is
a prime source of public “information"
lor the F Bl files. Our \ ictory has helped
spike the Moonies' bid for respectability
in Reagan's America.

The new McC'arthyism must be
fought' That’s why the SI has mounted
an aggressive legal challenge to the new
FBI Guidelines, the government’s most
ambitious attempt to date to legitimize
this brand of shoot-first McCarthyism.
I he SL legal Complaint (see WV No.
340, 21 October 1983) argues that the

government targets left-wing organiza-
tions, not for acts but for their ideas.
Despite decades of vicious and intensive
investigation — over 60 years for the
Communist Party, over 40 years for the
Socialist Workers Party and 20 years for
the Spartacist League — there have been
no prosecutions for violent crime or
terrorism. This is "a rather remarkable
record considering the duration and
scope of such investigation." states the
Complaint.

As Reagan's “state-supported” anli-
Soviet global terrorism increases, the
machinery of open witchhunting goes
into place. New laws are drafted for the
prosecution and jailing of political
opponents. Congress and the courts
move toward an “official secrets act” to
stop the “leaks"; loyalty tests and
polygraph tests loi lederal employees,
"reclassification” oi documents, and
squeezing off the "Freedom of Informa-
tion'' loophole. During Reagan's three
years in office “the number of federal
w iretaps and bugs has doubled.” reports
the Los Angeles Times (16 December
1983).

Ominously a federal judge in San
Francisco recently ruled that a 49-vear-
old engineer convicted of espionage can
be sentenced to death In a statement
that is practically a word-for-word echo
of the infamous Judge Kaufman at the
Rosenberg trial, he wrote that “this
court finds that capital punishment for
espionage is not uniformly dispropor-
tionate to the severity of the offense"
(New York Times. 13 January). And as
the Cold War winds blow, so the social
democrats are moved to try to kill the
Rosenbergs all over again. As we wrote
in “FBI Red-Hunt.” (WV No. 327. 8
April 1983). it is in this context that the
FBI Guidelines "represent the culmina-
tion of a Cold War witchhunting
process."

We’re locked into a battle with the
forces of terror — the capitalist state. We
did not ask to be in the vanguard in
fighting the new McCarthyism. But the
fight has come to us. As the anti-Soviet
war drive heats up and the reformists
retreat with ever greater speed, our
organization sticks way out asdefenders
of the Soviet Union and in opposition to
the Democratic Party’s anti-Reagan
popular front. We have taken up the
fight first of all in our own self-defense.
As we have said, we do not intend to be
blown away in the dead of night,
nameless, laceless victims. Thus as we
defend ourselves we are in the forefront
in the fight against this new "McCarthy-
ism with a drawn gun." And this
is clearly not only the fight of the
Spartacist Teague but a fight on behalf
of all perceived opponents of Reagan
reaction.

Government witchhunts are nothing
new. Secret police activities are a
constant fact of political life in the
USA. But intense waves of witchhunt-
ing are part of a larger plan to mobilize
the population through coercion. Some-
times it is the threat of losing a job.
Sometimes it is "just" a file. Sometimes
it is direct police terror. But in the
modern world, the domestic witchhunt
is a reflex in imperialism’s war —
sometimes hot. sometimes cold —
against the gains of the proletariat,
above all the gams of the 1917 Russian
Revolution The Palmer Raids were
part of the “red scare" after the
Bolshevik Revolution shook the world.
The McCarthy “Un-American” com-
mittees were part of the mobilization for
ihe Cold War after the popular front
alliance with Russia in World War II
Preparing the machinery lor this wave
of witchhunting lor Cold War II. the
government’s “terror scare" has not
even a grain of political reality But the
guns of this murderous capitalist state
are real enough And its many intend-
ed victims are real Your "terror file”
may already be in the FBI’s Big Broth-
er computer. Fight the new Mc-
Carthyism—Support the SL. suit
against the FBI Guidelines!*

We Beat Bac

k “Terrorist” Smears

F

ight the New McCarthyism!

The SL has a proud record of fighting this dangerous new red-hunt. In self-
defense we have battled the attempt to falsely brand us as terrorists, outlaws to
be shot first and questioned later. Under the banner: "A W orkers Party Has the
Right to Organize!” we have been in the forefront against the Cold War
witchhunt. W ith our suit against the sinister new FBI Guidelines, we continue
to defend ourselves and all those targeted by the new McCarthyites.

WV Photo

Moonies
Retract
Libel That
Kills

The Labor-Black Mobilization march story

and rradff anwnut*, who li*iened to
• and took pan in mditam
r aquad. ir.clud

stration. We no longer charge
that the Spartacist League-
Spartacus Youth League provoked
The violence on that day.

12 40 If w**
'hai the Klan would r>o»
march and a» in* police withdrew

<Tf)c Washington (times

L— tx+. .1.1 q^nor-pgwui.^ inu -rn Avt and Park. (1» Klin’. **

be* inmngT/lb* Klan* route o( the
march. **cured from the »p
prop naif police euihonoe* on Nos
22 Dunn* the n* « four days the
SL and the SYL poned thouaand* of
placard* and dmnbuted hundred*
of thou land* of leaflet* announcin*
the Labor Black MobtJitatioa rally
The Latex- 8 lack Mobduar.cn
rally be* an at about « JO • m on
Nov 2? and continued until about
12 40 p m engafin* the panictpa
• *on of 5.0W). predominantly black*

intended destination Thouaand*
it reamed up what ■*• to have been
the KKK march route. » topped traf
fic and c ax hanged victory aalute*
with driven

Pnor to and •> the time the Labor
black Mobilization demonstrator*
entered Lafayette Park on the op
potite aide of the Park police oper
anon* were in prog rc»» with police
uung tear ga> again*! other* wbo
had a»*embled near Lafayette Park
The Labor Black Mobilizat.ondem

ocitratora were directed by our
mem tor* tr the center of La ferrite
Part A brvef rally *u held to •»
•ert (he abaence of the Klan After
thi a rally the morn bx* aucccaaf ally
.fully, and in an orderly man
the demoeatrator* away
©Uce and tear gaaaing
the pert without too
hundred* of prole* to r»
encoded a victory party at rbe
ivua Hc**l in (he Capitol area
VYhar happened on Nov 27 wa*
that the Klan did oot march Tha
madia — with the taxable exception
of the black pret* — portrayed the
anti- Klan demonatraocm aa wide
tpread vtoience and lowing Bui It
paly The WoiAingion Time*
imed the SL and the SYL a.
ateun of violence against

ka

xliev* that through the null
r***nce of the Labor Black
MMhTuatian the Klan wa* copped
Neither the SL. the SYL nor any
other component of our man
Labor-Black Wfobiluanon demon
*rrat*on aowght pemapaud in or
condoned any violence again*! po
he*

JAJAESM ROBERTSON
Mat***) CWxaac
Tk* Mwruo* Lor»

EMILY TURNBULL
kUoaraJ Secretary

Washington

Deukmejian Retracts
“Terrorist” Smear

Otalr uf (California

•i

Sppartmfnt of .Duotirr
(Sforgp Srukinrjian

Artomry (Srnrrol

December 14, 19m

(916) 332-2430

Federal Bureau of Investigation
Pennsylvania Avenue between 9th S 10th 111
Washington, O.C. 20535

Subject: Correction of Oepartnent of
Justice’s Publication

Oear Sir or Madam:

T3iis is to inform you that the Inclusion of the Spartacist League and of the
Spartacus Youth Leanue on oage 11 of the Deoartrent of Justice's Publication,
"Oroanited Crime in California . . . 1979, Annual Pepnrt to the California
Legislature, Part 7 Terrorism,* was in error.

Very truly yours

Chief, Oureau of JJrganired Crime
and Criminal Intelligence

Secret Service Apologizes
to Jane Margolis

OfcPARTMLST OI Till TREASURY
uMiiD scans sn hit smvin

• aSIIIMilOV IM Mil*

nin iv IHBI4 mi

M«. Jana Margolis

475 Alvarado Street. «J

San Franciaco, California 94114

Rei Alleged False Arrest Jane Hargolis/CWA Convention
Detroit, Michigan; July 16, 1979

Dear Mi. Margolis:

Pleasc be advised that >n response to the above referenced
matrer the Secret Service Office of Inspections »as directed
to look into this claim to determine, aa accurately as possi-
ble, what did in fact occur at the time of the original
incident. Based upon this inquiry it is the opinion of this
Service that a misunderstanding between a Secret Service agent
and .1 Detroit police officer resulted in your being removed
from the convention floor.

m. r- .. . — 1 - .....i ...... — .. ..a..., —

The Secret Service, of course, regrets that this incident
. occurred. Obviously, due to the eatremc coraplcsity of supply-
ing protection to the President and others, and the sensitive
^ and sometimes conflicting interests that come Into play, the

Secret Service cannot be absolutely certain that other misunder-
i standings will never occur You can be assured, however, that
every effort will continue to be made to assure that errors of
this nature are kept to a minimum.

Again, the Secret Service regrets that this misunderstanding
has caused you distress.

Sincerely yours,

Hyrop I. Wezngtetn

Deputy Director

3 FEBRUARY 1984

7

Olympics...

(continued from page I )

ations lor the Olympics were undertak-
en. is uncanny for the way it projects the
government's “anti-terrorist" prepara-
tions for the Olympics as a screen for
state terror, Lhe movie stars a maverick
helicopter cop (Roy Schcider) who
uncovers a plot involving a heavily
armed surveillance copter (Blue Thun-
der). The chopper is equipped with
centralized access to the data banks of
the FBI, IRS and police agencies all
over — along with a super electronic
detection system — that gives the cops a
ready-made hit list and capacity to
“search out and destroy" their victims
without recourse to trial or legal
proceeding.

Operation THOR (Tactical Heli-
copter Offensive Response) is the code
name to introduce this chopper into the
LAPD's arsenal. “Blue Thunder" is
armed with a 20-mm cannon that fires
4.000 rounds per minute, aimed by an
electronic device that automatically
targets whatever the pilot, wearing his
special helmet, looks at. This is every
cop’s dream — patrolling with a drawn
gun. As Blue Thunder swoops down on
a mock Olympic village filled with
athletes, tourists and kids (all white
statuettes), terrorist pop-up targets
(painted red, of course) appear. Blue
Thunder is supposed to blast the red
targets while leaving the whites un-
harmed. It blows every red target to
smithereens but also leaves a mangle of
smoking and mutilated white targets in
its wake. While the federal honcho is
ecstatic, Scheider is horrified and this
leads him to expose the plot.

It is no accident that this movie is
widely discussed in the ghettos. While
Scheider’s role of “good cop" is Holly-
wood fiction, the appetite of the cops to
use armed helicopters is not. A typical
L.A. evening features an l A PD chop-
per circling in a tight arc with its
powerful searchlight pinpointing a
target for the cops' ground forces. These
helicopters fly numerous sorties into the
black areas of L.A. and are known there
as "ghetto birds.”

Undercover Cops and
Retrievable Records

The liberal makers of Blue Thunder
never question the legitimacy of the
anti-terrorism campaign; Scheider is
upset only because some innocent
bystanders get it as well as the “terror-
ists” But the real criminal terrorists are
the cops and the bourgeois authorities.
Recent public revelations of the
LAPD's secret police squad activities
paint a vivid picture of the cops' crazed
racism, brazen criminal disregard for
the law, and their years-long campaign
to infiltrate, disrupt and ultimately set
up their victims for murder

The American Civil Liberties Union
(ACLU) has combined six separate
lawsuits, representing 108 individuals
and 23 organizations, into a common

Hands Off Soviet
Olympic Athletes!

I OS ANGEI FS — The bourgeoisie’s
anti-"terrorist” preparations here in-
tersect an escalating campaign to ban
Soviet athletes from the Olympics In
the wake ol Reagan's KAI 007
provocation against the USSR last
September. California state senator
John Doolittle got unanimous appro-
val in the state legislature lor a
resolution urging "appropriate action
to oppose Soviet aggression" including
banning Soviet athletes from the
Olympics.

Doolittle along with assorted ultra-
rightist L.A. businessmen and Korean
anti-Communists formed a “Ban the
Soviet Coalition" which launched a
nationwide petition drive to bar Soviet

athletes with a petition ominously
warning of "acts ol violence" against
them. (One black Olympic gold
medalist — Rafer Johnson, a member
ol the I os Angeles Organi/ing Com-
mittee executive hoard — has publicly
opposed such a ban.) On September
2 1 . Soviet authorities canceled plans to
send a hockey team in December,
charging that its safety was jeopar-
dized by anti-Soviet actions being
whipped up by U.S. officials.

In Octobet Jody Powell, former
presidential press secretary under
Jimmy Carter, called lor street demon-
strations against the Soviet athletes.
“Let them come, but let them know
that when they get here they’re going to

face the sort of expression that we
allow in thiseountry. the demonstra-
tions and statements from a free
people." said Powell ( Los Angeles
Tunes, 20 Octobci 19X3) I his unusual
call lor public activism comes after
mobs ol Moonie cultists and other
screaming ultrarightist punks have
been permitted repeatedly to direct
their outrageous violent stunts against
Soviet embassies and their personnel
from I ong Island to California.

I he centralizing agency of these
sanctions and provocations is the
White House fhe State Department
prevented San Francisco-based I ASS
correspondent Yuri IJstimenko from
attending an I A. Olympics press
conference on December 7. Most of
L.A. County, even including strategic
Disneyland, remains off limits for
Soviet diplomats, journalists and
athletes. Down with the bipartisan
anti-Soviet Olympic bans, provoca-
tions and travel restrictions!

civil libertarian legal suit seeking dam-
ages against the LAPD and its old "red
squad." the Public Disorder Intelligence
Division (PDID). The PDID was
formed in 1970. after the turbulent '60s,
the Black Panther Party and particular-
ly the Watts rebellion. The PDID
maintained files on 200 different or-
ganizations, including the Spartacist
League. ACLU “discovery" hearings
established the not very surprising fact
that the PDID's mam targets were black
organizations and leaders, especially

Certainly among the most vicious
exploits of the PDID — and one that has
gotten relatively little publicity — was its
role in the disruption and dismember-
ment of the Black Panther Party. The
bloody persecution by the FBI and local
cops led to the murder of at least a dozen
Panther leaders nationwide with scores
more imprisoned on frame-up charges.
In L.A.. Panther leader Geronimo Pratt
has been in jail for eleven years (six
spent in solitary confinement) while his
wife along with other local Panther

Santiago, Chile
1973 or Los
Angeles 1984?

LAPD's arsenal
includes armored
personnel carrier
to terrorize black
and Flispanic
masses.

those who supported busing or stood
against police brutality In a confiden-
tial interview given to the Herald
Examiner, two former PDID agents
revealed that every major black organi-
zation in L.A.. including the NAACP,
SCLC. Jesse Jackson’s PUSH, as well
as black city councilmen and even ex-
cop Mayor Bradley, were under surveil-
lance. One of the officers summarized
PDID activities: “They were trying to
destroy the black movement in I A."
(Los Angeles Herald Examiner. 1 6 June
1980).

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for the Phone Strikers Defense Committee

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^ ^ Featuring

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Special Appearance actor William Marshall performing an
excerpt from his one-man show as the great Frederick Douglass

Sunday, February 19, 3 to 9 p.m.

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4308V; S Vermont Avenue

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(213) 663-1216 or 1217

LOS ANGELES

$5 donation
Proceeds to the PSDC

members were murdered. In another
case, in classic agent provocateur
fashion, the PDID got one of its agents
into a position of security chief for the
Southwest Community Justice Com-
mittee. which organized the 1979 march
on city hall to protest the brutal murder
of Eulia Love, a black mother of three
murdered by the LAPD.

The PDID only got into hot water
when it ran afoul of the bourgeois
politicians themselves. In 1978 the
PDID was discovered surreptitiously
videotaping a city council meetingcalled
to discuss a local nuclear power plant.
Gates’ response to allegations of secret
police tactics was his infamous state-
ment. "I don’t know what police spying
is!"

While the Police Department was
trying to stonewall it. two incidents
boiled so hot that the PDID was
formally disbanded by city officials. The
first crack in Gates' armor came from
the idiotic Revolutionary Communist
Party's May 1980 "Days of Rage." A
chance discovery identified the RCP’s
bullhorn pointman. who led a charge
into police lines. asa PDIDagent It was
later disclosed that the same undercover
cop was five feet away from RCPcr
Damien Garcia when he was murdered
nine days before. The RCP managed to
lind competent lawyers whose discovery
proceedings were so effective that Gates
was forced to strike a deal In exchange
lor the abrupt curtailment ol release of
PDID documents to RCP attorneys.

Gates agreed to drop all charges against
the May Day demonstrators.

Jay Paul and the
Western Goals Connection

The incident that really blew the lid
off started when an associate school
superintendent told the press in Novem-
ber 1982 that he was approached by
PDID officers offering him files on
school desegregation that the Police
Commission had ordered destroyed in
1975. This public exposure sent PDID
agent Jay Paul into a frenzy of activity
to retransfer thousands of files he had
been storing at his home to circumvent
the order. Nobody in the LAPD wanted
this hot potato and when it was finally
bounced to Internal Affairs, it was
leaked to the press. After 1 80 cartons of
documents were discovered in Paul's
possession, the PDID was disbanded.
Paul now claims that LAPD heads had
full knowledge of his activities — and for
once he’s probably telling the truth!

Jay Paul was no ordinary cop. He was
linked with Western Goals, a privately
funded and tax-exempt intelligencedata
bank founded in 1979 by John Birch
Society chairman Rep. Larry McDon-
ald. whose fanatical anti-communist
career was ended on KAI. Flight 007.
Among other functions. Western Goals
enables the cops to avoid pesky civilian
scrutiny by providing a safe house and
access to their murderous hit lists.
According to a 1981 fund pitch. Western
Goals' computer capabilities make it
“the first and only public foundation to
enter this area and fill the critical gap
caused by the crippling of the FBI, the
disabling of the House Committee on
Un-American Activities and the de-
struction of crucial government files"

( Los Angeles Times, 24 May 1983).

Jay Paul tied the video display
terminal in the PDID office in Parker
Center to the Western Goals data bank.
Paul's activities were so extensive it took
Internal Affairs 250 hours to interview

Spartacist League/
Spartacus Youth League
Public Offices

-MARXIST LITERATURE -

Bay Area

Fn 5 00-8 00 p m . Sat 3 00-6 00 p m
1634 Telegraph. 3rd Floor (near 17th Street)
Oakland, California Phone (415)835-1535

Chicago

T ues 5 30-9 00 p m , Sat 2 00-5 30 p m
523 S Plymouth Court, 3rd Floor
Chicago, Illinois Phone (312) 427-0003

New York City

Tues 6 00-9 00 p m . Sat 12 00-4 00 p m
41 Warren St (one block below
Chambers St near Church SI )

New York, N Y Phone (212) 267-1025

Trotskyist League
of Canada

Toronto

Sat 1 00-5 00 p m

299 Queen St W Suite 502

Toronto, Ontario Phone (416)593-4138

8

WORKERS VANGUARD

At Local 6 Convention

ILWU Ranks Beat Back Gag Rule

OAK I AND — Delegates to the annual
convention ol Local 6 (warehousemen)
ol the International Longshoremen's
and Warehousemen’s Union (II WU)
held January 28 rebuffed efforts by the
bureaucrats to line the union up behind
the bosses’ anti-Soviet war drive. By an
overwhelming three-to-onc margin,
they voted down a proposed gag rule
that would automatically refer all
foreign policy questions raised in the
local to International president Jimmy
Herman, the State Department's
messenger boy in the II WU.

The issue came to a head alter
Reagan's 007 spy plane provocation last
fall Herman and II WU officials re-
sponded by joining forces with the
Moonies in preventing a Soviet ship
from being unloaded in Los Angeles.
Herman also issued a policy statement
lining up with Reagan, which de-
nounced the USSR for “outrageous
violation ol civilized behavior" (see
“The Shame of the ILWU." I VV No.
338. 23 September 1983). When Local 6
president Al Lannon attempted to ram
this through at a September meeting of
the local’s East Bay division, the class-
struggle Militant Caucus led a success-
ful fight to vote it down. In the
November issue of the Local 6 Bulletin.
the officers then announced their
intention to enforce a gag rule. For good
measure, these Cold War trade-union
fakers laced their article with a good
dose of McCarthyite witchhunting and
redbaiting, whining that “The ’People’s
World' and ’Workers Vanguard’ news-
papers attacked the ILWU (the ‘Work-
ers Vanguard’ called the ILWU leader-
ship ’pro-imperialist swine’ and the
‘People’s World' accused the Union of
supporting Reagan.)”

At the convention. Jimmy Herman
interrupted the discussion on the offi-
cers’ report to deliver a lengthy ha-
rangue in support of the gag rule, but it
didn’t work. Even retired ILWU leader
Harry Bridges showed up to lecture his
former protege on the union's history of
refusing to be gagged by the ILAoreven

the CIO. But what the bureaucrats are
afraid ol is not simply paper differences
over foreign policy — the pro-Stalinist
Bridges regime, after all. specialised in
empty and cheap proclamations ol
“international solidarity” — but the pros-
pect of militant labor action against
imperialist war Only the Militant
Caucus has fought for this perspective
and squarely addressed the need lor
defense of the Soviet Union against
imperialist reaction. That is what
underlay the attempt by ILWU officials
last summer to purge Stan Gow. a
Militant Caucus spokesman in long-
shore. The attack on Gow was scotched
when hundreds of angry unionists
turned up at a membership meeting to
overturn the railroad job. Gow. who
was recently re-elected to the Local 10
exec board, helped organize picket lines
against cargo headed for Reagan’s
bloody junta in El Salvador and later
picketed a South Africa-bound ship
following the murder of three anti-
apartheid fighters. At stake here is
whether the ILWU will bean instrument
of the State Department, or use its great
potential power to further the interests
of the American working class and its
class brothers and sisters abroad.

The resolution opposing the gag rule
was put forward by the Rank and File
Coalition, a hodgepodge of aspiring
bureaucrats, aging New Leftists and
supporters of the Communist Party
Despite their opposition on this resolu-
tion. the Coalition supports Herman
and Lannon’s class-collaborationist
program and their subordination of the
union to the Democratic Party. But the
Democrats are part and parcel of the
anti-Soviet wardrive. from Afghanistan
to Poland to KAL 007. And only
recently the Democratic Party mayors
went to bat once again for the union-
busters, when they unleashed their cops
at Greyhound strikers.

Moreover, two business agents who
are supporters of the Coalition signed
the officers’ report, whose thrust was to
scapegoat the membership for labor’s

defeats, calling for a “war on apathy."
i.e.. condemning the ranks lor not
turning up in great enough numbers at
the polls to vote Democrat To make
sure the point was crystal clear, the only
concrete action proposal in the report
was a call lor a July 15 “Labor Parade
lor lobs and Justice." to be scheduled
one day before the Democratic Parts
convention opens in San Francisco!
Phis is a repeat performance of last
year’s Solidarity Day II demo held two
weeks before the elections, where the
entire lake-left bought the line that it
was something other than a rails for the
Democrats.

The People's World wasn't exactly
pushing CP leader Gus Hall's campaign
lor president either, demonstrating to
anyone naive enough to believe other-
wise that the Hall "campaign" is simply
a fig leal to cover up their support to the
Democrats Indeed, a comic sidelight to
the convention was the sight ol veteran
CP supporters like Joe Eigueiredo bus-
ily hawking “Run. Jesse. Run” buttons
Jackson's campaign is simply a cynical
ploy to bring disaffected blacks back
into the Democratic Party fold, only to
deliver their voles to Mondale next
November. And Figueiredo went to
great lengths to assure Lannon that a
Coalition-sponsored resolution to wel-
come Jackson into "the people's cam-
paign to dump Reagan in ’84" was not
an endorsement ol Jackson — which
might offend the pro-Mondale ILWU
tops — but simply a “welcome"!

The final resolution considered at the
conference was a motion to endorse the
demands of the Phone Strikers Defense
Committee against the racist anti-labor
Irame-up of CWA members Lauren
Mozee and Ray Palmiero. The motion
was initiated by the Militant Caucusand
cosigned by 28 East Bay members. In
spite of a campaign of redbaiting and
slander against the Defense Committee
by Lannon. the motion received 27 votes
in favor, including many of the younger
black workers, as against 40 opposed A

great many delegates abstained Dem-
onstrating its inability to take a clear
stand on a basic issue of working-class
defense against racist, scab violence, the
Coalition split all over the map One of
its business agents voted with the
officers, another abstained The pro-CP
component split between abstention
and support Lauren was well received
by convention delegates earlier in the
day outside the convention. And credit
is due to those delegates and members
lor whom the II Wl slogan. "An injury
to one is an injury to all!" is more than
just empty phrase-mongering.

Conditions in the ILWU. as in other
unions, have gone from bad to worse In
I oca I 6 alone, over 2.000 jobs have been
lost to layoffs and union-busting run-
aways in the past five years, while union
gains and contract provisions have been
surrendered in many houses. Squarely
posed is the question of leadership
Those like the Coalition and the
Stalinists who want “detente” with the
pro-imperialist bureaucracy end up
swallowing the labor fakers’ entire
program of class betrayal. What is
necessary is an uncompromising fight
for the class independence ol the unions.
As a 23 January Militant Caucus leaflet,
addressed to convention delegates,
put it

"I hc anti-communist American labor
bureaucracy is more anti-Soviet than
Reagan I heir alliance with the Demo-
crats means preventing militant action
by the labor movement Simple sell-
delense ol the working class requires a
political struggle to break with the
Democrats by ousting their agents in
the labor movement That means
building an organized opposition,
based on a political program which can
organize a labor offensive to reverse the
givcbacks I abor-hatmg Democratic
politicians, like [San Francisco mayor)
Feinstcin. can’t he ‘pressured’ into
defending the interests of working
people and blacks We need our own
political party which will unite the
millions of oppressed with a fighting
labor movement to get rid of this
oppressive, racist capitalist system that
threatens to blow us all up "■

him. When ACLU attorneys got these
tapes turned over to them, Gates
ordered all future Internal Affairs
interrogations not to be taped, so
embarrassing material would not fall
into the hands of the ACLU.

Freedom of Information Act
Fiasco

It’s instructive that despite the snow-
balling revelations of illegal police
spying, not even the most liberal
politicians in L.A. could get up the nerve
to take a forthright position for the
abolition of Gates’ secret police squad.
This cowardice underlies the farcical
five-year debate over a proposed Free-
dom of Information Act for the city.
With Gates pounding away at the theme
that such a law would cripple security at
the Olympics, amendment after amend-
ment was added to the hill to render it
virtually toothless. The day prior to the
initial vote on the measure last May.
Gates released the contents of a timely
letter he received Irom the FBI that the
act would have a "chilling effect" on
exchange of information between the
F B I and I API). I he measure was not
passed until two months later after a
I urt her amendment was added, allow ing
the LAPD to refuse to release tiles
without giving any reason except that
the law forbids it!

I he gutless liberals claimed a victory
but it is the cops who won here. Since

3 FEBRUARY 1984

this ordinance passed, 122 out of 123
requests for PDID files have been
denied! The cops’ dirty work and racist
brutality continue unimpeded, while
the temporarily disbanded PDID has
re-emerged as the Anti-Terrorist
Division.

The ACLU suit will no more stop the
kill-crazed LAPD than the council’s
impotent city ordinance. To be sure, we
hardly oppose the victims of police
spying suing for some modest financial
relief. But the ACLU is not opposed to
police spying, as long as it’s “clean
spying." The maximum these civil
libertarians asked for in their attempted
out-of-court settlement was civilian
surveillance of the PDID Having
bought the Big Lie terrorism scam, the
liberals end up swallowing the secret
police and everything that goes with it.
At bottom they can live with Gates' kill-
crazed cops because they buy the
capitalist system which requires the
services of these murderous hit men.
racists and dirty spies to preserve it As
Marxists, we call for the full publication
of the entire PDID files now — lay bare
the I APD’s monstrous crimes against
working people and minorities, which
go far beyond the cops* well-publicized
spying on the capitalist politicians.
Abolish the Anti-Terrorist Division!
Down with the FBI. CIA and all the
dirty secret police apparatus!

Smashing the secret police gangs will

be achieved not through endless court-
room proceedings and parliamentary
haggling, but through revolutionary
mobilization of the working class and
oppressed As long as the bourgeois
state exists, its repressive forces will
exist. Only successful proletarian revo-
lution can sweep the racists in blue off

the streets for good. Then and only then
will the murderous assaults on blacks
and other minorities stop. Real justice
will be brought to bear when Gates and
his ilk are brought before a labor/black
tribunal in Watts. That is the only way
the past and future victims of racist cop
terror will ever be avenged.*

SPARTACIST LEAGUE/ U.S. LOCAL DIRECTORY

National Office

Box 1377. GPO
New York. NY 10116
(212) 732-7860

Ann Arbor

C/O SYL

P O Box 8364

Ann Arbor. Ml 48107

Atlanta

Box 4012
Ailanta, GA 30302

Berkeley/Oakland

P O Box 32552
Oakland, CA 94604
(415) 835-1535

Boston

Box 840. Central Station
Cambridge, MA 02139
(617) 492-3928

Chicago

Box 6441. Mam PO
Chicago, IL 60680
(312) 427-0003

Cleveland

Box 91954

Cleveland. OH 44101
(216) 621-5138

Detroit

Box 32717
Detroit, Ml 48232
(313) 961-1680

Los Angeles

Box 29574
Los Fell* Station
Los Angeles, CA 90029
(213) 663-1216

Madison

do SYL, Box 2074
Madison, Wl 53701

New York

Box 444

Canal Street Station
New York, NY 10013
(212) 267-1025

Norfolk

P O Box 1972
Main P O
Norfolk, V A 23501

San Francisco

Box 5712

San Francisco, CA 94101
(415) 863-6963

Washington. D.C.

P O Box 75073
Washington. D C 20013
(202) 636-3537

TROTSKYIST LEAGUE
OF CANADA

Toronto

Box 7198. Station A
Toronto. Ontario M5W 1X8
(416) 593-4138

CWP...

(continued from page 5)

George Wallace. I he poster says that

Jackson will lead Black people back to

the plantation."

Thompson continues. “Such opposi-
tion would he more understandable if
the various mass movements were in
high gear and tearing up the streets." At
I aney College, he remarked that “no-
body is going to jump up and grab guns
and start shooting and stuff, unless
they're absolutely convinced that there
is no other way." So for the CWI* the
alternative is ghetto riots or the
Democrats. Here the CWP shows its
fundamental pessimism on the possibili-
ty for mobilizing the working class and
oppressed in social struggle against
Reagan reaction. The criterion for their
support to Jackson is that he’s popular,
“is doing an effective job of arousing the
grassroots.” Denouncing the "ultraleft"
critics ol Jackson and all the “quibbling
over Jesse Jackson's program" the CW P
adopts the famous watchword of Ger-
man social democrat Eduard Bernstein:
“The movement is everything, the goal is
nothing." Bernstein coined this three
quarters of a century ago to accommo-
date the workers movement in Germany
to small-change parliamentarism

For what is Jackson “arousing the
grassroots"? Certainly not for even a
minimal fight against the brutal racist
oppression endemic to capitalism: he
doesn’t even support school busing to
achieve integration (but then, come to

Mobilize labor and Blacks to

WV Photo

SL-initiated demonstration in
Detroit stopped Klan from “cele-
brating" Greensboro massacre.

think of it. neitherdid the CWP). Hecan
hardly be credited with the absurd,
utopian “butter not guns" pipe dream of
reformists who believe capitalism’s
"priorities" can be altered through
rational argument; Jackson calls only
for freezing military spending at its
current astronomical level. Thompson
gives Jackson credit for the “objectively
revolutionary” demand for full employ-
ment. But Jackson is in fact an anti-
union scabherder whose main answer to
unemployment is racist, chauvinist pro-
tectionism. railing at "Honda and Toy-
ota. Suzuki and Yamaha. Sony and
Panasonic, being unloaded at the docks
and replacing Buick and Chrysler in the
American market" ( Washington Post,
25 May 1983). When the majority black
Chicago Teachers Union struck in 1976
and 1983. Jackson attempted to organ-
ize “alternate" scab schools and sued the
union, cynically claiming the strikes
were against the black community (see
“Jesse Jackson: Front Man for the
Racist Democrats,” WV No.. 344. 16
December 1983).

Some of J.J.'s attitudes may be
rubbing off on the CWP. At the fancy
College talk. Richard Bradley — black
Spartacist candidate for San Francisco
Board of Supervisors in 1982 — called
on the audience to support Lauren
Moz.ee. a black phone worker, and her

Greensboro Daily News

Greensboro massacre, 3 November 1979 — Five CWP supporters were shot
down with inpunity by Klan/Nazi killers.

companion Ray Palmiero. The two
militants were victimized for defending
themselves and their union picket line
during last August’s national phone
strike. Even though CWP leader Nelson
Johnson has endorsed the Lauren and
Ray defense case, a CWP spokesman
sneeringly replied from the platform.
“That issue was one the sister got
emotional about — people were out on
the line and they called her a nigger and
you grab that." But not I hompson &
Co. — they’re into “a movement here
that's a little bit more sophisticated" —
too “sophisticated" to defend a former
Black Panther victimized in a racist,
anti-labor frame-up!

From Greensboro to
Jesse Jackson

The CWP needs to hide the political
reality of Jackson’s gambit, i.e.. locking
up those black Southern votes for the
Democrats in 1984 Defensively.
Thompson insisted in his New York talk
on November 19 that “Supporting
Jackson just to get black people... to
hoodwink them into supporting Mon-
dale is racist, it's treacherous, it’s a sell-
out of what the movement is all about.”
Sure it’s racist and treacherous —
qualities not lacking within the Demo-
cratic Party. A Spartacist spokesman
countered Thompson from the floor
during the discussion period:

"Well, that comes to the crux of it: I
think that is in fact the purpose of the
Jesse Jackson campaign, and that has to
be your purpose whether or not that is
your subjective desire. The Democrats
need the South to defeat Reagan. To get
the South they need the black vole. And
they know they're not going to vote for
Mondale, they know he was the vice
president of Jimmy ‘Ethnic Purity’
Carter. Therefore they need Jesse
Jackson to go out there and make that
voter registration campaign and stump
for votes in order to turn them over to
Mondalc at the Democratic conven-
tion. That is the political reality.”

This is a particularly bitter pill for the
CWP. Mondale was Carter’s vice presi-
dent and Democrat Carter was in office
when the Klan/Nazi murderers shot in
cold blood and in broad daylight five
CWP members protesting the Klan in
Greensboro. North Carolina. Carter/
Mondale were in office when these
fascist scum were acquitted by an all-
white jury, giving the green light to
racist terror all over the country.
Greensboro was racist murder, aided
and abetted by the government: from
the planning of the attack on the CWP
demonstration right through the kan-
garoo court which acquitted the killers.
Undoubtedly there are those among the
CWP membership who gag at the sight
of Jackson yucking it up with George
Wallace, who find it disconcerting to
cover up for the very party which
worked hand-in-glove with the murder-
ers of their comrades.

To overcome this, the CWP tries to
build up Jesse Jackson’s “movement"
credentials. Jackson is the man who
smeared his shirt w-ith Martin Luther
King's blood to claim the mantle of
MLK. and now Thompson claims
"King was developing into a revolution-
ary who was beginning to define a
socialist party for the U.S." At his New
York talk the SL spokesman exposed
this cynical attempt to rewrite the
history of the civil rights movement:
“You play the same role as the Commu-
nist Party did 20 years ago when it stood
with King against the left wing of the
movement, against the masses of blacks
in the ghettos who broke with King
when he called the cops to go into Watts
to smash the ghetto rebellion, against
the left wing in SNCC. who in Lowndes
County organized the Black Panther
Party against the policies of King for
support to the Democrats."

In an attempt to gain respectability,
the CWP has recently been making a
show of democracy. But the fist of
Stalinist thuggery emerged from behind
the red roses in the ushers’ lapels when a
second SL supporter and trade-union
militant spoke:

"My name is David Brewer. I’m a
member of I oca I 100 of the Transport

Workers Union here in New York City.
We’re the guys that run the subways.
“First of all. we’re in a time called
November. And November. .. will bean
important month in the future Ameri-
can workers government One. we'll
have a holiday ol mourning for the
martyred comrades in the CWP in the
Greensboro massacre. And two. we’ll
have a holiday of celebration —
November 27— when the Ku Klux Klan
was stopped from marching in
Washington,

"Now I was reading this [CWP]
statement on why we should support the
Jackson campaign, and I noticed a
quote from Lenin, from ‘Left-Wing
Communism.’ And I think the quote is
misleading. [He says] you must not sink
to the level of the masses, to the level of
the most backward strata of the class,
says you must tell them the bitter truth.
And I believe, comrade Phil, you're not
telling the masses the bitter truth about
Jesse Jackson

“We can debate [Martin Luther] King’s
trajectory if he had lived ... forever.
That’s not important. What is impor-
tant is at the crucial time of the 1963
march, when you had masses of black
people converging on Washington,
D.C.. the role that Martin Luther King
played. You said in your speech that
King got his dream from the grassroots
movement Hegot hisdream in the Oval
Office, arm-in-arm with Robert Ken-
nedy, Jack Kennedy.

"Listen, this is the bitter truth, like
l.enin said you have to tell. He [JFK]
said [to King], you better get out there
and control this thing. And it’s the same
reason that the national Democratic
Party went into Chicago and told those
racist Democrats out there, let’s cool it.
we got to have the black vote to get
elected in this country and you better
shake hands with Harold Washington.
And it’s the same reason that Jesse
Jackson... [Chair: “Sum up and sit
down! You got a new point to make, a
new point, it’s the same one. don’t
repeat the same one. . .”]

“The point is. you claim to be the
vanguard of the American working
class, the only people who fight against
oppression. That after Greensboro
everybody ran and hid. That's not true.

It was the Spartacist-imtiated demon-
stration that stopped the Klan from
'celebrating' the massacre of your
comrades. We stopped them in Detroit,
we stopped them in Washington But
it’s based on the labor movement.
That’s what you guys miss. So you go
from Greensboro to Jesse Jackson. . .’’
[Pandemonium. CWPers shout. “One
Trotskyite is enough!” Others in the
crowd demand. "Let him speak!”]

At this point, the TWU brother was
surrounded by goons, grabbed from the
mike and thrown out of the hall. A
walkout by several Spartacists and

other disgusted leftists followed there-
after. Political struggle was not over for
the evening, however. A black unionist
demanded the floor, announcing him-
self as “a member of the Committee fora
Fighting TWU, from the island colony
of Puerto Rico, and a supporter of the
Spartacist League." After denouncing
the CWP’s cowardly exclusion, he
concluded:

“I’ve been sitting here a long time,
listening to your logic .Jesse Jackson
...he went and shook hands with
George ‘Segregation’ Wallace. The
great Jesse Jackson — he’s anti-
abortion. he’s into protectionism . ...
We blacks are sick and tired of
Republicans and Democrats and Dem-
ocrats and Republicans. We need our
own organization."

Whereupon he. too, stomped out of the
room, fist high in the air. shouting “Viva
Puerto Rico Libre!"

Back to the Outhouse

In its Maoist heyday, the CWP was
verbally far to the left of today's CWP’s
parliamentary cretins who now write
that “If the working class and oppressed
people were to gain a fair share —
consistent democracy, it would be
possible to transform the U.S. into a
socialist U.S. A. through peaceful
means" (Thompson, The Eighties). This
is worthy of the ex-Trotskyist Socialist
Workers Party (SWP), notorious for
their imbecilic "consistent whatever
leads to socialism." Thompson him-
self— who could often be recognized
in Cambridge by the fact that he was
tossed out of as many Maoist meetings
as the SL, who was instrumental in
recruiting leftist black youth to a
supposedly “hard" "Marxist-Leninist
Mao Tse-tung Thought" group — now
indeed sounds like some SWPer when
he writes:

"If Black people could truly elect their
representatives to positions of power in
government in a fair proportion to their
numbers. Black people could bring the
lunctioning of state monopoly govern-
ment to a standstill ”

— The Eighties

This is not only anti-Marxfst to the
core — hut the arithmetic is all wrong
Just how does comrade Thompson
envision a minority of 20 percent
bringing the state to a standstill, “fair
proportion" or not?

Racist oppression is integral to the
functioning of capitalism, and the

Make checks payable/mail to: $2.50

Spartacist Publishing Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116

10

WORKERS VANGUARD

struggle against it — the quest for black
freedom — has been a motor force for
social progress and social revolution in
this country. Thompson writes that “At
one point. Martin L uther King believed,
and Jesse Jackson today believes, they
are saving Blacks from communism.
However, the process of struggle itself
inevitably leads to communist conclu-
sions." Genuine struggle for black
liberation does, in fact, require an attack
on the fundamental social structure of
capitalist society. But the tailing of those
forces who seek to derail and defuse the
fight for black liberation only serves to
perpetuate the racist status quo.

After Greensboro, the CWP has
desperately sought to end its isolation
by joining — or even inventing, if
necessary — a popular front with the
Democrats. Seeing there was no longer
any mileage in being a Maoist, “ex" or
otherwise, they abruptly switched their
line on the Soviet Union (see “Why
CWP Flip-Flopped on Russia," WV
No. 283, 19 June 1981). From adventur-
ist substitutionism, the CWP has zig-
zagged to liberal electoralism. So, in
San Francisco in April 1980 when some
home-grown Nazi punks wanted to
come out on Hitler’s birthday, the CWP
sought the endorsement of San Francis-
co mayor Feinstein and held a "peace-
ful, legal” rally of a few hundred some
blocks away whtle the T rotskyists of the
Spartacist League mobilized militants
from two dozen unions in a crowd of
more than 1,200 that occupied the site
where the fascists had intended to
goose-step. (CWP leader Nelson John-
son also accepted our invitation to
speak at the militant rally.)

Similarly, in Washington. D.C. on
November 27. 1982, the CWP and its
front group PARK appealed to D C
mayor Barry to “ban the Klan" while the
SL initiated the Labor/Black Mobiliza-
tion to occupy the area of Capitol Hill
where the Klan had threatened to begin
its march. Five thousand overwhelm-
ingly black workers and youth — the best
of Washington’s black and labor
militants — turned out to the SL-
initiated call and stopped the nightrid-
ing Klan terrorists cold. But the CWP
and a few dozen supporters were
meanwhile reduced to wandering from
our L.abor/Black Mobilization to the
popular-front palaver at McPherson
Square, designed for the Democrats as a
diversion from a massive, labor-
centered confrontation with the Klan.

Eschewing the necessary communist
duty of mobilizing the working class and
its allies among the oppressed, the CWP
has come full circle from New Left/
Maoist adventures back to the Demo-
crats. It is the Trotskyist Spartacist
League that has sought to avenge the
Greensboro massacre through the suc-
cessful mobilization of blacks and labor
to stop the fascists' provocations in the
black industrial centers. These mobili-
zations break the masses from their
Democratic Party bosses in action and
give them a taste of workers’ power on
the streets. The black Democrats are not
halfway to somewhere. They are a
necessary pillar in the racist capitalist
status quo— there to keep the lid on
black struggle.

The CWP wants to “get in on the
ground floor" of the anti-Reagan
popular front, and that’s where they’ll
be. all right. While Jackson makes a
show of running for the White House,
munching pecan rolls with Wallace at
the Alabama State House, the CWP's
going to be back at the outhouse,
shoveling the shit for the Democrats
while chanting. “Run. Jesse, run!" Until
the red-baiting begins, as happened to
CWPer Nelson Johnson as soon as he
raised his head as a lefty in the National
Black Independent Party a few years
ago. Anyone who wants to go “all the
way with J J.” will soon get rid of all the
“red" trappings anyhow. So while the
CWP campaigns earnestly for Mon-
dale’s black front man. we will continue
to defeat the racist terrorists — and their
bosses in Washington — through the
program of integrated class struggle.*

3 FEBRUARY 1984

Chicago...

(continued from page 12)

buildings. lhc> said In at least two
buildings, the garbage compactors had
to be turned olf when they were Hooded
after pipes broke, officials said Gar-
bage piled up in the chutes of those
buildings, and residents used the stair-
wells and galleries to dispose of trash
“Hundreds of residents had to use their
kitchen stoves around the clock to keep
warm At least a dozen tenants have
been sickened by the fumes from their
stoves and have had to be treated at
nearby hospitals

"In addition to the lack of heat and hot
water, hundreds of tenants have had to
contend with water pouring into their
apartments from broken pipes."

It was a disaster. Around the Christmas
holidays, garbage went uncollected for
two full weeks. Faced with unbearable
squalor, the tenants tried to fight back.
Several hundred tenants went on a rent
strike. They demanded Robinson’s
head.

So Harold Washington, in a face-
saving measure, found a new chief for
the CHA and rehired the fired workers,
giving them a total of $400,000 in back
pay and damages. Washington stated it
was all a “mistake." It was a “mistake”
for Washington and Robinson because
they didn’t get away with it. Although
Washington has lately been quite visible
visiting the projects vowing “aid" for
residents in the 1.300 CHA buildings,
the election of the city’s first hlack
mayor has meant just more of the same
Chicago is the city where, according to
recent findings, blacks live further
below whites than in any major city in
the country. Yet the new "scattered site"
desegregation housing plan is a cruel
joke, with only a measly 400 units to he
placed in “mostly white areas" (and
none at all in Daley’s Bridgeport)

CHA residents have also been
“promised" increased police presence.
Robinson, in fact, had plans to create a
mini-police force (probably made up of
his buddies) just for the projects In the
ghetto, police department Geslapo-style
raids have long been the norm And it is
particularly dangerous whenever some
bourgeois politician decides to “clean
up" — witness when former mayor
"Crazy Jane" Byrne descended upon
Cabrini Green in 198 1 . equipped with an
occupying army of Chicago police,
forcing tenants behind on their rent out
on the street (see "Mayor Byrne’s Racist
Stunt," WV No. 278. 10 April 1981).
The call for more police in black
communities is always an invitation to
increased cop violence!

After Washington’s primary victory,
in the face of the racist backlash led by
the local Democratic Party Machine, we
insisted that Washington had the right
to take office with all the normal
prerogatives. But we did not give one
ounce of political support to this black
capitalist politician. In contrast, the
fake-lefts jumped on the Washington
bandwagon and have continued to
support his cutbacks and layoffs down
the line. Thus the ultra-reformist Com-
munist Party (CP) in an article by
Illinois CP head Ted Pearson in the
journal Political Affairs (November
1983) fully enlists in the anti-labor
offensive. Pearson praises Robinson for
his firing of the CHA repairmen and
their replacement with “trainees selected
from among the impoverished residents
...at regular union wages." Actually,
these “trainees" were never hired. The
whole scam was pure and simple umon-
busting by the city, with the active
approval of the CP.

The Communist Workers Party,
which called Washington's election “a
political earthquake for blacks." was
even more grotesque. CW P honcho Phil
Thompson, on a national tour stumping
for Jesse Jackson, said:

“Harold Washington fired the elevator
repair company that wasn't repairing
the elevators in the projects We're still
living in the projects, nothing has
changed there, but the elevators are
working a little hit better."

Oh yeah? Thompson ought to try giving
his “elevators run on time” speech today
on the 17th floor of some tower in the
Robert Taylor project!

Far from making things a "little bit
better" for black people, the black
mayors of America's big cities are there
to carry out Reaganomics with a
vengeance on a local level. The black
overseers are there to keep the lid on the
ghetto and crush the heavily black city
unions for the white capitalist masters.
Thus in ATU Local 241, where transit
workers are threatened with 1.000
layoffs if they don’t eat a rotten sellout,
Washington made a personal appear-
ance to campaign for his scheme to loot
the union pension funds to bail out the
city bosses. Today. Chicago remains
"Segregation City" because the oppres-
sion of blacks and other minorities is
built into American capitalism. What’s
needed is not more Harold Washingtons
to shove Reagan cutbacks down the
throats of the ghetto masses, or Jesse
Jacksons to con impoverished and
powerless black people with the illusion
of "black power" in the racist Demo-
cratic Party, but a multiracial workers
party fighting on behalf of all the
oppressed.

In the teachers strike last fall we
insisted that this key integrated union
must “mobilize all Chicago labor and
the black masses to stop the austerity/
cutbacks drive which affects every area
of city life, leading all the oppressed in a
fight for survival" (see “Victory to
Chicago Teachers Strike!" WV No. 339,
7 October 1983). To link the workers
movement to the ghetto — through
demands for more and better schools,
for a program of busing to the suburbs,
for the formation of labor/black defense
guards to protect the minority kids and
stop the racists. To put an end to
residential segregation requires more
than a few “open housing" marches
against “red-lining," as Martin Luther
King discovered in his failed attempt to
take the civil rights movement north to
Chicago in the mid-’60s. Revolutionary
socialists call for a vast program to build
high quality, low cost integrated hous-
ing throughout Chicago and its lily-
white suburbs In the unions we fight for
a class-struggle leadership to put labor
in the forefront of the battle against
racist terror, recruiting minority youth
into union-run training programs and
fighting for jobs for all.

This is the kind of united class
struggle which could beat back all the
union-busters, from city school chief
"Ruthless" Love to Harold Washington
to the race-hate mongers around “Fast
Eddie” Vrdolyak You just have to look
at the broken-down elevators, smashed
windows and burst pipes in Cabrini
Green to know Chicago has never been a
city that worked for black people and
the poor. From the ramshackle tene-
ments bordering the stockyards where
East European immigrants were packed
in the earlier part of the century to the
sprawling South Side and West Side
ghetto firetrap apartments, the shame of
American cities will only be swept away
and genuine equality and freedom for
blacks will only come through socialist
revolution! ■

Steel...

(continued from page 12)

the result is that workers unite with their
"own” bosses instead of fighting them,
while the bosses rake in the profits.
Ultimately this escalating trade war will
lead to imperialist shooting war.

The only Steelworkers’ spokesman
presented by Donahue was Alice Peura-
la. a former president of USWA Local
65 who was dumped by the members in
her re-election bid. When U.S. Steel
began to chop South Works to bits, the
“progressive" Peurala opposed labor
action to fight back. Now her proposal
is to go crawling to the Reagan gov-
ernment to run the South Works mill.
Similarly, reformists like the Commu-
nist Party’s Gus Hall have proposed
such schemes as a "call on Congress to
immediately enact a labor law and a
program to save the steel industry."
including a call for “nationalization”
(Daily World. 29 December 1983).
These demands boil down to a Chrysler-
style government bailout of the bosses at
the taxpayers’ expense. At best it would
lead to a European-style steel industry,
such as in France, where the social-
democratic-admimstered capitalist gov-
ernment is laying off thousands of
steel workers in the name of austerity.

If there were ever a prime candidate
for expropriation, it’s certainly the steel
bosses who have run the industry into
the ground The American steel industry
is a prime example of the utter decay of
capitalism itself. Unlike Chrysler. U.S.
Steel is not about to go under Instead,
the industry has been bled to death by
the “robber barons” of steel, who
repeatedly refused to invest in new plant
and equipment and chose instead to
squeeze out every last penny for their
personal profit. As a result, the U.S.
steel industry is crippled with 19th
century plant in a world approaching
the 21st century. The most recent
example of the steel bosses’ shortsighted
rapaciousness was U.S. Steel’s $6.2
billion investment in Marathon Oil. a
transaction designed to please coupon-
clipping stockholders while hastening
the decline of steel

The fight for jobs in steel is a fight
against capitalism itself. As one black
woman noted on the Donahue show:

“I think the changing limes is the
general crisis that we find capitalism in
at this time It's not just steel, hut it's
every segment of this society— the
hospitals, housing, the schools, and it's
not just in Chicago, but it’s all over the
world of capitalism And I think that
we have to go according to what the
Constitution says — any time a system
gets so it can't take care of the people,
not only do we have the duly to get rid
of it but the obligation The plight of
labor is a product of the nature of this
system."

The first step in this fight must be the
ousting of the class-collaborationist
labor leadership, who are responsible
for the givebacks. the no-strike ENA.
the backstabbing of PATCO, the
betrayal at Greyhound We need a class-
struggle workers party, to fight for a
workers government that would ex-
propriate the parasitic steel bosses and
establish a planned economy in the
interests of working people' ■

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11

WORKERS VANGUARD

Black Mayor Fired Craft Workers

Chicago Public Housing: Frozen Hell

CHICAGO — In the mayoral elections
last spring when black Democrat
Harold Washington was pitted against
the racist Republican Bernard Fpton.
we warned: “Harold Washington Will
Betray Black Chicago." And this is
exactly what has happened First
Washington announced some 700 jobs
would be slashed in an all-out assault on
city labor. Then last fall a union-busting
pay-cut-or-job-cut contract “offer" pro-
voked a strike by the 55 percent black
Chicago Teachers Union, as Jesse
Jackson’s Operation PUSH unsuccess-
fully fanned the flames of racism trying
to isolate the teachers from the black
and Hispanic communities. Currently
transit workers are on the top of the list
facing the cutback ax And in the middle
of this brutal winter, black residents of
Chicago slum housing projects arc
literally freezing to death following the
firing of the maintenance workers
Conditions are so bad that last week
4,000 people mobbed State Street when
HUD was handing out federal rent-
subsidy applications for private apart-
ments. The crowd, desperate for a
chance to move out of the dilapidated
public housing, jammed South State
Street and blocked traffic for several
hours until the Chicago cops on horse-
back moved in to break it up.

Just look at the horrors they face in
the projects: Evellean Upchurch, a
Chicago Housing Authority (CHA)
resident, mother of two. died when she
was forced to walk down ten flights of
steps to a waiting ambulance. Older and
disabled tenants are trapped on the
upper floors because only a handful of
elevators in the entire CHA are func-
tional. Mothers are afraid to send their

Chicago Tribune

WV Photo

Blacks in city housing projects suffer massive garbage pile-ups, flooding,
broken elevators and freezing temperatures.

children to the store or to school
because of possible attack by gangs. The
prison-like atmosphere of the high-rise
buildings is intensifying. The gangs now-
charge “fare" for the right of residents to
use what elevator service is left. The
buildings are in such poor shape that
any other landlord other than the CHA
would in typical Chicago fashion have
them burned then condemned and

demolished by the city.

In the 1950s, under “Boss” Daley,
miles of South Side slums were torn
down and replaced by high-rise mono-
liths. (This was when the term “urban
renewal means Negro removal" was
coined, and segregation patterns were
rigidly enforced by constructing free-
ways like the Dan Ryan to fence in black
areas.) The projects, due to criminal

neglect by past and present mayors and
other crooked, thieving politicians, have
been allowed to deteriorate for years
and have now become "vertical slums.”
In fact, the CHA has been for the
Democratic Party what Las Vegas is to
the Mafia — a way to skim off the
bucks — and everyone gets a cut.

Recently, though, things came to a
head. Ex-cop Renault Robinson, for-
mer head of the Chicago Afro-
American Patrolmen’s League and one
of Harold Washington’s most loyal
supporters, was awarded the chairman-
ship of the Housing Authority. Robin-
son’s first act in office was to appropri-
ate for himself a S 14.000 limousine and a
chauffeur. He told outraged CHA resi-
dents whose elevators don’t work. “It’s
my business." then proceeded to refur-
bish his office at a cost of $20,000.
Robinson "got his," so to hell with the
black masses.

In late September he announced the
firing of 259 craftsmen (mostly white)
whom he demagogically blamed for the
terrible conditions in the projects. Then
he went after the janitors (who are
black), squealing that they were “lazy."
The city incredibly claimed the fired
CHA workers could be replaced with
senior citizen details armed with mini-
mal training and wrenches to “fix” the
elevators and decrepit plumbing! So
when the sub-freezing weather hit in late
December, the buildings fell apart.
Water pipes burst, elevators stopped
and heating plants w-ent out. As the
Chicago Tribune ( I January) described
the chain reaction after the pipes burst:
“The broken pipes, in turn, forced the
shut-dow n of furnaces in about 20 CH A

continued on page 1 1

Steel Militant Says: Oust the Giveback Bureaucrats!

South Works on the Slag Heap

"The unions have lost their power.
Not surprisingly, when a fellow has to
eat. and feed his kids, he’s going to be
less militant. It’s inevitable." taunted TV
talk show emcee Phil Donahue His
audience consisted of steel workers and
their families, many of whom have been
out of work for years now. The January
20 NBC-TV program came on the heels
of U.S. Steel’s recent announcement of
shutdowns at 23 more mills, throwing
thousands of steel workers out of jobs,
including those at the South Works
plant in Chicago. This follows billions
of dollars of union concessions suppos-
edly to “save jobs" — and workers are
hopping mad

One laid-off South Works steel
worker in the audience. Damon I ewis.
called for a class-struggle response:
“That’s not true at all l abor is
feeling it really hard and they’re willing
to fight But the problem that they're
lacing is that their leadership cowers. So
that the Greyhound [strike] there is sold
out In the last miners strike in I97N
they had a rotten contract shoved down
their throats alter refusing it time and
time again And there is no one in their

12

leadership that stood up and said.
‘We’ve got to oust the present leadership

and get a new one'

“At U.S. Steel there's no fight and
they've lost 15.000 jobs with the recent
decision by U.S. Steel to close those
plants There was no fight. There was
just givcbacks. givebacks. givebacks.”

Lewis was followed by an older worker,
who interjected: “Our first mistake in
labor is that situation with Reagan.
Believe me, when he brought that
downfall on PATCO. Lane Kirkland
should have stood up the next day...
and shut down the whole country and
you’d see Mr. Reagan back off of that.
I’d guarantee that."

Mass sit-down strikes which phys-
ically hold the bosses' sacred private
property hostage, mass picket lines
w hich nobody dares cross — these are
the kind of class-struggle tat ties w hich
built the unions anti which are needed
loda\ to reverse the bosses' offensive.

But that was not the talk from the
union officials present on the show
United Mine Workers (UMW) presi-
dent Richard Trumka could only offer

Chicago South
Works, one of
23 U.S. Steel
mills slated to
be entirely or
partially shut
down.

Kagan/ NY i imes

protectionist schemes against foreign
steel, playing into the bosses’ plans to pit
U.S. steel w orkers against their brothers
and sisters abroad. This is in line with
the official policy ol the United Steel-
workers (USYVA). which has joined

with the corporations in protectionist
suits to limit steel imports in the U.S.
Needless to say. trade-union bureau-
crats in Britain and elsewhere play the
same game against American steel, and
continued on page II

3 FEBRUARY 1984

WORKERS VANGUARD

25C

No. 348

17 February 1984

U.S. Out of Near East, Central America!

BLACK HISTORY
MONTH

John Reed Speaks to
the Communist
International, 1920

Blacks

and

Reds

SEE PAGE SIX

"I don't want to he killed here. It's
crazy. They are crazy. We are crazy "
— Israeli soldier in southern Lebanon

FEBRUARY 12 — “We arc making
progress in Lebanon.” proclaimed
Ronald Reagan in his Stale oil he Union
speech in late January. A week later he
bailed Congressional Democratic lead-
er l ip O’Neill lor proposing to pull the
Marines out ol Beirut “He may he
reads to surrender, hut I'm not." Yet
within days the macho man president
was forced to cat crow, ordering the
besieged Marines evacuated to warships
oflshore within the next lew weeks. And
to make it look like he didn't “cut and
run." he ordered the Sixth Meet to open
up with the IJSS Sew Jersey's 16-inch
guns, killing who knows how mam
hundreds or even thousands ol Dru/e
villagers.

For domestic consumption the cow-
boy in the White House declares that
“America is standing tall.” but w hen the
lighting broke out in West Beirut last
weekend the American press reported
with relief that the Marines were safely
hunkered down at the airport while
bullets whizzed around them. Some
“peacekeeping" troops! With consum-
mate cynicism Reagan offered naval
and air cover to the British. French and
Italian contingents of the “multi-

I >ru/c gunmen" the t S was v impell-
ing against a lew davs ago'

\lmost all \mci leans want out of the
hloodv mess Reagan has gotten himself
into m I ebanon. hut some right-vv ingers
were shocked that their hero came oil
looking like a paper tiger m his first
serious lest I he ultra-hawkish II all
hired Journal (N I ebruary ) wrote m
dismay

' President Reagan's decision in move
I S Marines Imm Beirut to slops oil
[he I ehanese coast is a stunning deleal
continued on pane 9

Yl'RI VLADIMIROVICH VNDROPON
1914-1984

He sought to curb
the worst excesses
of the Bureaucracy.

He sought to
increase the
productivity ol
the Soviet masses.

He made no overt
betrayals on behall
of imperialism.

He was no friend
of freedom.

Shi'ite

militiaman

battles

Gemayel's

forces.

national force" he was leaving in the
lurch I he British hugged out the next
day. the Italians ordered a “gradual"
pullout and the French replied. “thanks,
but no thanks." II Mitterrand wants to
regain some credibility he might throw

m with the Shi’ites and Dru/e and start
shelling the l S fleet

Also left high and dry hv Reagan’s
announcement were \merican civ ilians
in Beirut When! S citizens called up
to ask about evacuation, embassy
officers told them they were on their
own or simply hung up. State Depart-
ment officials were worried about giv mg
the "wrong impression" in Damascus,.
When the Committee to Re-Fleet the
President discovered this was creating
the wrong impression in Dubuque.
Washington suddenly switched gears
and started coptcring them out hv the
hundreds I he last thing Reagan needs
is hundreds ol American “hostages"
trapped in I ebanon on November 4
lust ask Jimmy Carter
As the U.S. Navy was indiscrimi-
nately bombarding villages m the Shut
Mountains surrounding Beirut. Dru/e
leader Walid lumhlatt (who named a
son alter famcrlanc) vowed “We will
not allow our people to be k died w ithout
taking revenge " 1 his is no idle threat as
the Maronites or the French Foreign
I egion can attest (see box page 9) I he
Dru/e have a long memory ol the
wrongs done them, and a history ol
doing something about it Suddenly the
\<*n Jersi m stopped its shelling and
Dru/e militiamen showed up with
flowers m their gun barrels at the I S
I mbassy to help in the evacuation "I
am here just to make sure that no
one bothers the \mencans." said one
( Yen York Tones. II February) What
happened to all those "bloodthirsty

An Exchange: Yuri Andropov
and Soviet Defensism

When the Sport vast league in ilia ted
the Ixiborf Black Mobilization which
stopped the Kit Klux Klan from staging
a race- terror provocation in Washing-
ton, D.C. on 27 November 1982. we
never imagined that one result would be
an interesting hot debate with some of
our ex-members on the question of
Stalinism. Bur when the charier busload
from Norfolk. Virginia took the name
"Nat Turner Battalion" and the New
York comrades followed suit with the
"Yuri Andropov Brigade." the self-

six led "External Tendency" (ET) in To-
ronto said it was a new low even for us
In our replx to their first letter, we ob-
served that our Stalinophobic critics,
who claim that the "Yuri Andropov
Brigade" means we have sold out to
Stalinism, evidently have no objection
to the "Ulysses S. Grant Division."
named for a Republican capitalist
politician. We publish below the second
letter on the subject from the Toronto
"External Tendency" along with our
reply.

Dissidents Denounce
“Andropov Brigade”

ET Letter

Toronto

October 28. 1983
Dear Comrade Robertson:

Thank you for being so good as to
send us a copy of your reply to our letter
of 13 December. 1982. Please be assured
that we have given it our most careful
consideration

Frankly we were a bit disappointed
with your letter. You defend so ada-
mantly (but so poorly) w hat is so clearly
a mistake. Perhaps it is a mistake that
you feel some personal responsibility
for. We sympathize with the inherent
difficulties of attempting to develop a
coherent defense of the"Y uri Andropov
Brigade" within the programmatic
framework of Trotskyism, but even so
we were disappointed. We had some-
how expected more from you.

You quote a line from our letter that
"On the most general level Andropov

and the bureaucrats he represents are
counterposed to everything that Trot-
sk\ fought for." We would have thought
that this was a fairly unobjectionable
statement among Trotskyists. Leon
Trotsky throughout his life fought for
international proletarian revolution.
Stalin was the “gravedigger" of
revolutions.

But after quoting the above line you
choose not to take it up at all. Instead
you attempt to substitute a position
which we do not hold which, you assure
us, is only a "more poetic version" of the
same thing. But it is not. We reject the
erroneous position of the Dobbs-
Cannon SWP majority in 1952-53 with
which you attempt to saddle us ("Stalin-
ism is counterrevolutionary through
and through and to the core"). We reject
adulation of Yuri Andropov for the
same reason — because it negates the
contradictory character of the Stalinist
bureaucracy and thus constitutes a
continued on page 3

TROTSKY

Lenin’s Last Struggle

On his deathbed in late 1 92 2-ear ly 1923
Lenin fought to prevent the bureaucratic
degeneration of the Communist Party in
power. He therefore proposed to broaden
working-class representation on the Cen-
tral Committee and to remove Stalin from
the powerful post of secretary-general.
Lenin's testament was subsequently sup-
pressed by Stalin for three decades.

LENIN

Stalin is too rude and this defect, although quite tolerable in our midst and in
dealings among us Communists, becomes intolerable in a Secretary-General. That is
why I suggest that the comrades think about a way of removing Stalin from that post
and appointing another man in his stead who in all other respects differs from
Comrade Stalin in having only one advantage, namely, that of being more tolerant,
more loyal, more polite and more considerate to the comrades, less capricious, etc.
This circumstance may appear to be a negligible detail. But I think that from the
standpoint of safeguards against a split and from the standpoint of what I wrote
above about the relationship between Stalin and Trotsky it is not a detail, or it is a
detail which can assume decisive importance.

V.f. Lenin

January 4. 1923

— Collected Works , Volume 36 (Moscow, 1966)

WORKERS VANGUARD

Marxist Working-Class Biweekly of the Spartacist League of the U.S.

EDITOR Jan Norden

PRODUCTION MANAGER Noah Wilnef

CIRCULATION MANAGER Darlene Kamiura

EOITORIAL BOARO Jon Brule, Charles Burroughs, George Foster. Liz Gordon. James Robertson,
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Opinions okpressed in signed articles or letters do not nocossanly express the editorial view point

No. 348 17 February 1984

In Defense of Trotskyism

SL Reply

3 January 1984

Dear Comrades.

Your reply of 28 October 1983
regarding the "Yuri Andropov Brigade"
collapses the contradictions inherent in
the Soviet bureaucracy and Soviet
degenerated workers state, thereby
vitiating the Trotskyist position of
unconditional defense of the Soviet
Union when that question has become
most urgent.

You consider the key point made in
your original letter your paraphrase of
our slogan "You Can't Fight Reagan
w ith Democrats" as "You Can’t Defend
the Soviet Union with Yuri Andro-
povs." Our slogan is based on the fact
that there is no class difference between
the twin parties of the American
imperialist bourgeoisie Do you mean to
imply that there is no class difference
between imperialism and the Soviet
bureaucracy? Then you thereby reject
T rotsky's analysis of the Soviet degener-
ated workers state as well "Oh. no." you
protest But your all-too-clever and very
revealing paraphrase of our slogan is
ambiguous at best. Can the Soviet
Union be defended with Marshals
Ustinov and Ogarkov. whoarealso part
of the bureaucracy and who helped
engineer Andropov's rise to power? Is
the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan
then not to be hailed and the Soviet
handling of the KAL007 provocation to
be condemned?

Your position is reminiscent of the
statement: “We have never supported
the Kremlin's international policy."
Before you grow too enamored of that
formula let me remind you that its
author was Max Shachtman in the
1939-40 fight over the Russian question.
About it Trotsky observed:

"In its present foreign as well as
domestic policy, the bureaucracy places
first and foremost for defense its own
parasitic interests. To that extent we
wage mortal struggle against it. but in
the final analysis, through the interests
of the bureaucracy, in a very distorted
lorm the interests of the workers’ state
arc reflected. These interests we
defend — with our own methods."

— "From a Scratch to the Danger
of Gangrene." In Defense of
Marxism, p. 127

Trotskyism provides a coherent world-
view in which the contradictory charac-
ter of the Stalinist bureaucracy is
reflected. Your assertion, "On the most
general level Andropov and the bureau-
crats he represents are counterposed to
everything that Trotsky fought for." is
both undialectical and very distant from
Trotskyism.

Do you not believe that under the gun
of Reagan's anti-Soviet war drive the
Soviet bureaucracy may be compelled
to take certain measures, albeit de-
formed and partial, to defend the state
power from which they reap their
privileges? It is no accident that in this
hour of grave peril the bureaucracy has
placed at its head Yuri Vladimirovich
Andropov. An interesting account ol
Andropov's character and rise to power
can be found in Zhores Medvedev's
recent book Andropov. There is no love
lost between this Soviet biologist and
dissident and the former head of the
KGB who incarcerated him in a mental
hospital and exiled him. Nevertheless.
Medvedev contrasts Andropov to
Brezhnev, who "was not a real leader in
1964. but the representative of the
bureaucracy which sought a quieter.

safer, more secure, privileged life" (p.
196). Andropov is known as a decisive
and efficient administrator w ho used the
KGB not only to persecute dissidents
but to Tight crime and corruption in the
highest levels of the bureaucracy,
including Brezhnev’s immediate lamily.
Confronted by Reagan's nuclear Arma-
geddon. the bureaucracy evidently felt
the need lor a leader who would shake
out the sloth, corruption and misman-
agement of the Brezhnev years.

Of course the bureaucracy cannot
reform itself as neo-Bukharinites like
the Medvedev brothers believe. It will
take the restoration of soviet democracy
through proletarian political revolution
to unleash the productive resources of
the Soviet workers state. And as
comrade Robertson wrote you. in
our view, that political revolution is
inextricably linked to the uncon-
ditional military defense of the Soviet
Union against American and other
imperialisms.

Your comparison of Andropov with
Stalin and Beria, the mass murder-
ers of tens of thousands of Commu-
nists and Red Army officers, is an
obscene amalgam worthy of the pages of
Commentary. Andropov’s entire politi-
cal career was shaped by a more tranquil
period domestically. To hold him
personally responsible for the psycho-
pathological mass crimes of Stalin
reflects the methodology that holds
the bureaucracy to be a homogenous
reactionary mass counterrevolutionary
through and through— i.e., a new
exploiting class. Given this methodolo-
gy there is no distinction between a
Guevara heroically fighting for social
revolution arms in hand and a Corva-
lan who disarmed the workers in the
face of counterrevolution, since they
both were Latin American Stalinists. It
is worthy of those who make no
distinction between a Ramon Mercader
and a Leopold T repper, between a Mark
Zborowski and a Kim Philby. since they
were all agents of Stalin’s murderous
secret police. This methodology can
never account for, much less attract, an
Ignace Reiss. He served as an officer of
the GPU at the very height of Stalin’s
terror, and declared for the Fourth
International at the cost of his life
precisely because he saw in it the
unstained banner of revolutionary
Soviet defensism. To paraphrase com-
rade Robertson’s reply to you: sitting at
the summit of the Soviet bureaucracy.
Andropov is unlikely to follow the path
of Ignace Reiss. But it is infinitely easier
to see him in that role than (if you will
not have Sakharov) the Douglas Frasers
of the world who have placed them-
selves countless times in the direct
service of the imperialist secret police.

Truth is concrete: therefore it is
hardly surprising that there is not a
word in your letters about the concrete
conditions in which the Russian ques-
tion is posed today: thecrisisof U.S. and
other imperialisms finds no other es-
cape than thermonuclear Armageddon
against the Soviet Union, imperiling not
only the working-class gains of the
Russian October but the very survival of
humanity. This is manifestly a period of
enhanced dangers for our small revolu-
tionary party. It is as well a time of
enhanced opportunities for us. as shown
for example by our demonstrated
capacity to lead large numbers of blacks
and other working people in mass
struggles against the fascist race-
continued on page 3

2

WORKERS VANGUARD

ET Letter...

(continued from page 2)

departure from Trotskyism. Of course,
from your point of view the position has
the advantage ol being considerably
easier to knock down — an attribute it
shares with other straw men

If all you are searching for is a more
lyrical rendering ol the idea which we
were seeking to convey, you might wish
to consider the following passage bv
I rot sky:

"Stalinism originated not as an organic
outgrowth ol bolshevism but as a
negation ol Bolshevism consummated
in blood. I he process of this negation is
mirrored very graphically in the history
ol the Central Committee Stalinism
had to exterminate first politically and
then physically the leading cadres ol
Bolshevism in order lo become wh.u u
now is: an apparatus of the privileged, a
brake upon historical progress, an
agency ol world imperialism Stalinism
and Bolshevism are mortal enemies.”
(“A Graphic Historv ol Bolshevism,”

7 June 1939)

Not merely "counterposed." but
“mortal enemies!” He puts it so nicely.
Of course despite this assessment
Trotsky remained, as do we. firmly
Soviet defensist. The two positions are
mutually exclusive only in the minds of
Stalinist sycophants. Surely we could
agree that “on the most general level”
Glenn Watts and Lane Kirkland are
counterposed to class-struggle militants
in the unions? Yet is it not easy to
imagine situations where we would both
find ourselves in a military bloc with
these treacherous parasites? Same thing.

Of course the Soviet bureaucracy has
a dual nature. But your reply dodges the
key point that we made in our original
letter: "You can’t defend the Soviet
Union with Yuri Andropovs." You
claim to continue to recognize the
"inextricable" connection between mili-
tary defense and political revolution in
the Soviet Union. But. those who
adulate Stalin’s heirs act to undermine
the defense of the Soviet Union. Let us
refer you once again to comrade
Trotsky:

“...I consider the main source of
danger lo the USSR in the present
international situation to be Stalin and
the oligarchy headed by him An open
struggle against them, in the view' of
world public opinion, is inseparably
connected for me w ith the defense of ihe
USSR.”

(“Stalin Alter the Kinmsh Experience."
13 March 1940)

Of course, one cannot rule out in
theory the possibility which you raise
that a Stalin or an Andropov might
throw in his lot with the insurgent
proletariat in the course of a political
revolution. (We imagine that such a

development is somewhat less probable
than the prospect ol you declaring for
the External Tendency.) Obviously,
openly pro-imperialist elements, like
Sakharov, are even le. s.s likely to support
the workers than Andropov. So what’’
I he necessity lor an “open struggle
against” the Stalinist oligarchs is in no
way obviated by that

As lor the hypothetical glee experi-
enced by blacks m D C upon hearing ol
the advent ol the Yuri Andropov
Brigade, would they have been any less
h.ippv about a John Brown. Frederick
Douglass or Leon I rotskv Brigade? As
.i matter ol lact. we have our doubts as
to whether any ol the “ground-down
black people of DC.” actually ever
heard of the Yuri Andropov Brigade.
How could they — it wasn't among the
endorsers of the demonstration If any
ol Washington's black population did
leel gleeful about that name on a bus
Irom New York, imagine their pleasure
had the Yuri Andropov Brigade ven-
tured a little further out of the closet and
paraded down Pennsylvania Avenue in
Iront of the White House holding aloft
pictures of its namesake! But of course
to do that, the “semi-facetious” semi-
disclaimer would have to be discarded
and you would no longer be the leader of
a Trotskyist organization.

We can only imagine that the final
“illuminating” red herring that you toss
our way regarding a united front with
the Kremlin lor Soviet defensism is
intended to distract the attention of the
unsophisticated readers of your internal
bulletin (Just to be absolutely clear, let
us assure you that we entirely agree with
the point which Trotsky makes in the
quote you cite.) Or are you perhaps
trying to suggest that parading around
Washington as the “Yuri Andropov
Brigade" would somehow constitute a
military bloc with the Kremlin for the
defense of the USSR? If that’s what you
mean why not come out and say so?

Calling yourselves the "Yuri Andro-
pov Brigade" was a mistake. All of your
very considerable political experience as
well as the talents of the capable and
devoted Marxists who produce WV
can't change that. If we were to offer you
some advice it would be this: don’t try to
defend the indefensible, it can only
produce bad results.

For several decades you played a
critical role in preserving. defendingand
even developing the Trotskyist pro-
gram. But you didn’t thereby acquire
proprietary rights to it. Adulation of a
Stalinist bureaucrat can neither be
squared with fidelity to Trotskyism in
general nor with Soviet defensism in
particular. We doubt that you would
even have tried ten years ago.

The fact that you find it so necessary

to cling to this error, indeed the fact that
it could occur in the first place, is
evidence that the leadership of the SI /
US. with you at the apex, is losing its
political bearings. I his can only he a
reflection ol the atrophying of confi-
dence in the possibility of building a
mass Bolshevik party capable ol leading
the seizure ol power by the working
class.

I here is a necessary and reciprocal
relationship between the loss ol commu-
nist cutting edge and the destruction ol
internal democracy in a revolutionarv
organization For a Bolshevik tendency,
especially a small propaganda group in
conditions ol bourgeois democracy, a
vigorous and democratic internal hie is
not a desirable option but a vital
necessity il the organization is to be able
to respond effectively to the changing
developments of the class struggle.
Unfortunately the SL/iSt is no longer
an organization which has a healthy
internal life — a development for which
you more than any other individual
must be held accountable.

Bolshevik greetings.

External Tendency ol the iSl

SL Reply...

(continued front page 2)

terrorists. A number of our softer and
weaker members, intimidated by the
dangers (and often equally intimidated
by the obligations posed by our new
opportunities), have departed the Spar-
tacist tendency, including yourselves.
But when the K K K threatened to march
on 27 November 1982 the issues posed
prompted many ex-members from New
York to head for D C. with us We were
pleased to have so many former mem-
bers turn out (without of course making
any political concessions to them).
Fascists are the domestic shock troops
for Reagan’s anti-Soviet war drive;
therefore it was entirely appropriate as
well as ironic to dub this contingent in
the Labor/Black Mobilization the"Yuri
Andropov Brigade," which was appre-
ciated by most if not all of its partici-
pants. The only protest has come from
the “External Tendency.” which while
capable of traveling all over the country
to attend SL functions (and speaking
without hindrance) were at this historic
victory conspicuous by their absence.

And no one in Washington that day
would have mistakenlhe Yuri Andropov
Brigade as a concession to Stalinism.
The real Kremlin sycophants and
Stalinoids. the Communist Party and its
various satellites (Marcyites, Guardian-
ites. Trendites. CLP. CWP, etc ) were
busy in the service of the anti-Soviet

Lochon/Gamma-liaison

In late 1979, when Soviet forces
intervened against U.S.-backed
Afghan feudalists, Spartacists said:
Hail Red Army in Afghanistan!

popular front building a Democratic
Party rally at McPherson Square. Or.
not wanting to conlront the Democrats
in Congress and City Hall, they were,
like yourselves, absent.

Finally, we note — and your puerile
alfectation of superciliousness does not
disguise — that despite yourselves you
must pay the Leninist democracy of the
Spartacist League its due. For as you
attest, this exchange, as with any serious
(and even not so serious) criticism or
polemic against the SL. will find its
place in an internal bulletin or some
other suitable format. What other
tendency is so solicitous of healthy
internal life and education of its mem-
bership as to publish a series like
Hate Trotskyism. Hate the Spartacist
league* No. comrades, we esteem that
rich party democracy necessary to
forging centralized revolutionary clarity
and determination in action, that
democracy which you voluntarily
placed yourselves outside of in this
period of urgent revolutionary tasks.

We know what our duty is and we
stand at our posts. As Trotsky wrote on
the eve of the Second World War:

” I he workers’ state must be taken as it
has emerged from the merciless labora-
lory ol history and not as it is imagined
by a ‘socialist’ professor, reflectively
exploring his nose with his finger. It is
the duty ol revolutionists to defend
every conquest of the working class
even though it may be distorted by the
pressure of hostile forces. Those who
cannot defend old positions will never
conquer new ones.”

—“Balance Sheet ol ihe Finnish
Fvents." In Defense of
Marxism, p. 178

Fraternally,
Reuben Samuels

Kangaroo Court Suspends CWA Militant

Fight the Witchhunt of Kathy Ikegami!

SAN FRANCISCO. February 10— A
kangaroo court in phone workers
union (CWA) Local 9410 has just
handed down its frame-up verdict
against Kathy Ikegami, a leader of the
Militant Action Caucus(M AC). Local
9410 president Jim Imerzel’s hand-
picked trial body, chaired by his
girlfriend, pronounced Ikegami guilty
after an 18-month inquisition.

According to Imerzel’s witch-
hunters. Ikegami "brought the union
into disrepute" because, as the verdict
statement put it. she “divided the
leadership of this Union and its Rank-
and-File members." In short, she told
the CWA membership the truth about
Imerzel's prostration before Ma Bell.
The CWA bureaucracy has for de-
cades refused to fight the phone
company and now wants to blame
phone workers’ demoralization and

disgust on militants like Kathy Ikega-
mi. Imerzel wants to gel rid of Kathy
and the MAC because they exposed
his collusion in concealing projected
layoffs: because they fight to win
strikes through mass militant picket
lines that nobody dares to cross;
because they stand for an end to the
union’s notorious ties to the CIA and
for a workers government to put an
end to capitalist oppression.

Most of the trial was spent
“proving" the well-known fact that
Kathy is a Spartacist supporter, an
association she termed "a badge of
honor" in her closing trial statement.
Ikegami was also declared guilty of
"willfully violating" union bylaws
because, as an exec board member, she
refused to rubberstamp Imerzel’s
appointments to steward and com-
mittee posts. Kathy and the MAC

want a fighting union whose officials
should be elected by the member-
ship to represent them, not behold-
en to patronage from the sellout
bureaucrats.

Imerzel’s brazen frame-up verdict
comes down now when phone workers
are still reeling from the debacle of last
summer's strike and the continuing
victimization of picket line militants
like Lauren Mozee and Ray Palmiero
Busy witchhunting Ikegami lor a year
and a half. Imerzel & Co. are protect-
ing some real criminals in the union.
The MAC brought out during the trial
that Imerzel's buddy, former secretary
Joe McKenna, had attended meetings
of the Ku Klux Klan. This racist has no
place in any labor organization! And
the bureaucrats have protected the
scabs who crossed CWA picket lines
last summer. Imerzel’s side is with

open racists, strikebreakers and the
company against militant unionists.

Imerzel's trial body has fined
Ikegami $.300 and suspended her Irom
the union for six months — an open
invitation to the company to lire her.
Ikegami now has 30 days to appeal this
verdict to the membership — and there
is no membership meeting scheduled,
of course. During the trial, over a
thousand CWA members signed peti-
tions demanding the dropping of the
Iramc-up charges against Ikegami and
the recall of the Imerzel clique. Now
it’s up to Kathy’s union brothers and
sisters to act again in defense of Kathy
Ikegami — the union needs more light-
ers like her! As Kathy put it in her
statement January 16 before walking
out of the kangaroo court:

"Purging fighters from the union.

[is J ii policy of making enemies of
those who want to make our union
strong It’s the militants who build
unions and win strikes. Imerzel is
playing right into the hands of Ma
Bell.”

Smash Imerzel’s purge of Kathy
Ikegami!

17 FEBRUARY 1984

3

SSS Uraentlv Needed to Pav the State’s Ransom

1

ayl
A If

lor Fan
ibama

lily Si
Legal

ave

Lyi

d fri
nchii

Dm

ig

The state of Alabama couldn't get
away with its attempted racist legal
l\ nching ol the Taylor family, live black
working people lrom the North who
laced monstrous frame-up charges in
Montgomery Although the court is
demanding ransom in a settlement
reached on February 3. the state was not
able to send the Taylors to jail where, as
black men branded as would-be cop-
killers. they would face almost certain
death Under the terms of the settlement
reached in Judge Randall Thomas’
chambers last Friday. Worric. Elbert
and Willie James Taylor and Larry Hill
each pleaded guilty to one count of
third-degree assault (a misdemeanor).
Although they faced charges which
could have put them in jail for 20 years,
each received a six-month suspended
sentence and a year’s probation to be
served not in Alabama but in their home
states of Ohio and Michigan. Charges
against Chris Taylor, who has been
lighting extradition to Alabama, were
dropped.

Justice in thiscase would have been to
drop the charges against the Taylors, jail
the killer cops and give millions to this
tormented black family. Instead, the
Taylors must pay $11,000 to the despi-
cable nightriding cops. Ed Spivey and
Les Brown. But it was not money the
racists were after here in the Deep
South. The lynch mob wanted the
deaths of the Taylors as an ’’example" to
all black people in Reagan's America
who dare to defend themselves against
KKK-style attack Chris Taylor ex-
pressed the relief of every supporter of
the Taylors when he told WV. “Thiscase
was a really racist thing and it’s
unfortunate for us that justice wasn’t

served They [the family] feel it was

unfair too. but it was something they
had to accept because our lives are so
much more valuable than the $ 1 1.000."

A Imost a year ago. 30 members of the

Taylor family gathered in Montgomery
to mourn the death ol Annie Bell
Taylor. Racist plainclothes cops Brown
and Spivey, seeing “shiny new cars with
out-of-state plates” outside the dilapi-
dated shack, burst into the Taylor
gathering with their ^57 magnums

The Taylor family.

drawn and shouting racist slurs. The
Taylors, thinking they were under Ku
Klux Klan attack, disarmed the thugs
(one of whom was shot in the process),
and called the cops. But the racist thugs
were the cops. For the Taylors’ elemen-
tary act of self-defense they were beaten
bloody, official police tapes doctored
and the full weight of the state of
Alabama was brought against them to
finish in the courtroom what failed on
Todd Road that night of February 27
It sticks in the craws of Mayor
Folmar and D A. Evans that the
Taylors who whipped the police are
alive to tell about it. But the racists
couldn't make their frame-up stick
What stayed the hand of Alabama lynch

law was primarily the black people of
Montgomery who saw’ the case as their
own and came forward in courageous
support ol the Taylors. Last November
a hung jury refused to convict Worrie
Taylor. 49. of Warren. Ohio, the first
member of the family to stand trial.

Three black jurors stood firm for
acquittal, able to resist some 20 hours of
deliberation and pressure from the
judge. These jurors knew that black
Montgomery was behind them because
each day of the trial they saw 80-100 of
the Taylors' supporters lrom 9 a.m.
when the court opened to 10 p.m. each
night. The spirit of defiance was
particularly loud and clear when Dis-
trict Attorney Evans asked the jury in
his summary: “If you break into my
home. I'll kill you. Is that the message
you want to send out of this communi-
ty'.’’’ An estimated 150 blacks in the
courtroom replied. "Yeah."

The trial had touched a nerve among
these black people who understood

what was at stake in this case and
were not afraid to lace down Mayor
"I iihrer" Folmar and his Confederate
troopers each day in court "I wouldn't
be satisfied unless the man who shot and
assaulted those officers are behind
bars.. But this was the best we could
do." said Folmar [Montgomery Adver-
tiser 5 February). It was the spectre ol
further mobilization of blacks around
the case which led I) A. Evans to seek a
settlement on the eve ol Worrie I aylor's
scheduled retrial.

While Montgomery’s black people
were on the front line of the battle to
save the Taylors, they had powerful
allies lrom working people in the plants
and ghettos in the North. In Pontiac.
Michigan the Taylor family's union
brothers and sisters in the UAW came
out to show support; hundredscameout
to black church rallies there and in
Warren. Ohio. Early on. the Spartacist
League took up the cause, seeking to
mobilize labor/black support around
the country, publicize and raise funds
for the Taylors' defense. With demon-
strations at Wayne Slate University and
outside the giant Ford River Rouge
complex in Detroit, we sought to enlist
the support of black workers and
students at these key centers. In the
campaign to stop Chris Taylor’s extra-
dition from Michigan to face the
Alabama legal lynch mob. the Partisan
Defense Committee. Labor/ Black
Struggle League and Rouge Militant
Caucus initiated a petition signed by 1 39
Detroit area unionists, labor and black
leaders, including 95 workers in UAW
Local 600

The Taylors have acted courageously
from the first moment the cops burst
through their door. Their attorney Troy
Massey reported that with the plea
settlement, the Taylors “still feel that
they were morally and legally justiHed in
doing what they did” (Alabama Journal
and Advertiser. 5 February) It may well
give the next set of nightridingcops who
plan to attack some black homes
something to think about. The Taylors
have made their contribution to black
Southern self-defense. We must contin-
ue to defend the Taylors by helping pay
Alabama's racist ransom. The price of
black courage in Alabama must not be
borne by the Taylors alone — they
shouldn’t have to pay a dime! WV
urges its readers to send generous
contributions to: Taylor Defense

Fund, c/o Central Bank of the South.
150 Dexter Avenue, Montgomery.
Alabama 36104. ■

WASHINGTON. D C — Over 200 peo-
ple packed the second floor of the Ibex
Club in Washington. D C. on February
I for three sets of great jazz from
saxophonist Houston Person and his
group, featuring vocalist Etta Jones, in a
benefit performance for the Partisan
Defense Committee (PDC) The PDC
is a nationwide class-struggle, anti-
scctarian defense organization in ac-
cordance with the political views of the
Spartacist League The enthusiastic,
integrated crowd came to hear the
popular jazz artists and to celebrate the
victory achieved when the Sl.-initiated
I ahor/ Black Mobilization stopped the
Ku Klux Klan from marching in the

nation’s capital on 27 November 1982
I he PDC has been raising funds to
cover the costs of the legal campaign
which successfully forced the Washing-
ton Times, organ of the anti-communist
messiah Sun Myung Moon, to retract its
deadly libel against the Spartacist
League/Sparlacus Youth League (see
WV No. 345, 6 January). The Moome
press had accused us of provoking
violence against the cops in the Novem-

ber 27 anti-Klan mobilization. The
PDC is also supporting and raising
kinds for the defense of victimized Bay
Area phone strikers Lauren Mozeeand
Ray Palnuero Lauren, a lormer ten-
year member of the Black Panther
Party, and Ray were fired from their
jobs and are lacing years in the state
penitentiary for defending themselves
and their picket line against a violent
racist assault by a scab manager during

Jazz Benefit
A Big Hit

‘A

WV Photos

last summer's nationwide telephone
strike.

Houston and Etta gave one of their
best performances ever for the benefit/
fundraiser lor the PDC The audience,
more than three-quarters black, was a
congenial mixture ol labor militants,
jazz bulls and socialists — quite a lew
w'erc all three at once. Before the
second set. the master ol ceremonies.
Gene Herson. a militant opposition-
ist in the National Maritime Union,
read greetings lrom Lauren. The audi-
ence cheered at Mozee’s remark that
"1 abor/ black mobilization stopped the
KKK from marching in Washington.

continued on page 8

4

WORKERS VANGUARD

9

British Spartacists Slam Sheffield Ban

Martyrs of “Bloody Sunday”

Remembered

EXCERPT! I) I ROM
SPA RTA CIST BRITAIN
NO 54. EEBRl ARY I VS 4

Bloody Sunday, January 1972: the
day 1 4 ci\ tl rights marchers were gunned
down in the streets of Derry [Northern
Ireland] by British troops. Now the
fascist National Front (NF) wanted to
make the annual commemoration
march, slated lor Sheffield 29 January,
the scene for another bloody Sunday
When Sheffield's labour-dominated
City Council, headed by l abour “Iclt”
rising star David Blunkctt. imposed a
ban on use ol council facilities by march
organisers in the wake of the Harrods
bombing, the NF saw a green light for
race-hate provocation. Emboldened by
the labour bureaucracy’s cowardly
treachery in the face of the Tory
onslaught against the NGA [printers
union], feeding off the anti-Soviet war
drive, the NF crawled out of the sewers
in an attempt to prove itself as the
bourgeoisie’s shock troops for anti-Irish
reaction. What was called for was
English and Irish workers and all racial
minorities joining together in struggle
against a common, deadly enemy: a
mass trade-union/minority mobilisa-
tion in this solidly trade-union city to
demand the imperialist troops get out of
Ireland and to inflict a crushing and
humiliating blow against the NF race-
terrorists. That’s what was needed.
That’s what the revolutionary Trotsky-
ists of the Spartacist League (SI ) fought
for.

What happened instead was an anti-
democratic ban on all marches, initiated
by Blunkettand imposed by Tory Home
Secretary Leon Brittan. in towns and
cities throughout the region. For the
first time in 12 years, there was no
Bloody Sunday march in England
Instead ol being crushed under the heel
of labour and minorities, the fascists got
off scot-free with the know ledge that the
streets of England were off limits to
opponents of British imperialism that
day. That this outrage could come to be
was bitter testimony to the state of the
opportunist left in this period of Cold
War.

The Labourite misleaders bent over
backwards to prove themselves loyal
lackeys to the imperialist ruling class.
The Communist Party, with its industri-
al base in Sheffield, staye*. invisible. The
fake-Trotskyists. like Socialist Action
and Socialist Organiser, erstwhile cheer-
leaders for Provo-nationalism now
ensconced in the Labour Committee on
Ireland (LCI). dropped thequestion like

a hot potato rather than come out
against Labour “left’' Blunkctt. And the
nationalists ol Sinn Eein and their fakc-
lelt press agents ol the Rev olutionary
Communist Party (RCP). its Irish
Freedom Movement ( IFM) Iron! group
and the centrist Workers Power (WP|.
who were meant to be mobilising the
Bloody Sunday march, did everything
to demobilise it For weeks their onlv
response to Blunkett’s ban was an
impotent petition campaign, to be
followed by an even more impotent call
to reselecl the l abour councillors. In the

day Brittan announced the ban. we
organised a protest picket outside
Sheffield I own Hall I him protesters
picketed behind banners which pointed
the wav forward "Smash Britain's
lorlure Camps — Croups Out Now!"
"Labour Council’s Anti-Irish Ban is
Green l ight lor NF — I rade Unions.
Minorities: Drive the Fascists Oil the
Streets'" And on the Sundav. while the
Republicans and their lake-lelt Iriends
were nowhere to be seen, we held a well-
delended public meeting. "A Commem-
oration ol the Centuries ol Celtic

might have turned out At that verv
moment, lour coaches Filled with
skinheads— one emblazoned with the
( loss o| St George— were being de-
tained and turned around at the Shef-
- lield spur oil the motorwav bv the
cops.

Having seen to it that there would he
no Blood) Sundav march, the powers-
that-he now tried to make sure that
there was no public expression ol
opposition to British imperialism at all
that day. I hree hours helorc our
scheduled public meeting, a representa-
tive ol the Shcllield Pol) Student I Inion
I xeeutive notified us that our room
booking there had been cancelled
because the) did not want a public
meeting on Ireland I hex didn’t stop
us— our meeting - went ahead at an
alternative venue Ifc remembered
Hli a nil Stmdax '

In the wake ol their criminal betraval.
Sinn Fein and its RC P and WF camp
followers attempted to cover their
tracks Having abandoned their Blood)
Sundav demonstration, they held a
meeting subsequent Iv to concoct an
alter-the-lact "alternative’’ — to bus
people to Wakefield prison where Irish
hunger striker f rank Stagg died lo
exculpate their consistent refusal to do
anything to stop the National From,
thev now try to claim there was no NF.
dismissing our report ol the coaches
turned around bv the cops as a ‘Man-
lier." claiming thev were II M and not
NT supporters An SI supporter at the
meeting made short shrill ol this crap bv
describing the coaches with their skin-
heads and banner and asked. "I hat
couldn't have been IFM supporters—
could it?"

In their thirsi to tail alter some loree
or another, these opportunists exposed
their hollow pretensions to “anti-
imperialism’’ and "anti-racism." Cling-
ing to the coattails ol the Sinn Fein
nationalists, their onlv strategy lor
lighting the oppression ol the Irish
Catholic people is to scream about "self-
determination lor the Irish people as a
whole." endorsing the nationalist pro-
ject of a united Ireland forcibly incorpo-
rating the Protestant people. Incontrast
revolutionaries understand that the
light against the special oppression ol
Irish C atholics in the North requires the
umtv ol Catholic and Protestant work-
ers in a struggle lor their common class
interests.

Racist British imperialism will meet
its downfall onlv at the hands ol a
unified working-class assault led by a
revolutionary vanguard party which
acts as tribune ol all the oppressed.
Around the events ol the Bloody
Sunday march, the labour-loyalists
and v icarmus nationalists demonstrated
where they stood I his year’s Bloody
Sunday march should have been a
victorious rout ol (he fascist rabble by
-thousands ol militant workers and
minorities. I hat is what we lought to
build I o make sure that happens next
time, the task lacing us today is to build
the Spartacist I eague into the mass
revolutionary workers party this coun-
try needs

Excerpts from the Spartacist league/
Britain leaflet dated 24 January are
reprinted helou

LABOUR CUUNUL3 fin i riftian arm is GREEN LIGHT FOR NF

UNIQN5/HIN0RITIE5: DRIVE THE
FR5CI5T5 OFF THE STREETS!

SPARTACIST LEAGUE

mr

Bloody Sunday, 1972

end. they abandoned their march
without any warning, criminally setting
up militants and minorities for a
potential fascist rampage as they turned
tail and ran.

The martyrs of Bloody Sunday were
remembered in Sheffield last month —
by the Spartacist l eague. Our support-
ers distributed thousands of leaflets
[excerpts printed below] agitating for
mass trade-union/minority mobilisa-
tion at pits and steel plants and minority
communities in the Sheffield area as
well as elsewhere. We canvassed dozens
of Labour Party and trade-union
officials in an attempt to unlock the
potential social power of the labour
movement On Friday 27 January, the

Spartacist Britain

Spartacist League/Britain protests
ban on demonstrations in Sheffield,
England, January 27.

Struggle Against English Domination
The Role ol Sheffield and its Labour
Movement”

When we proposed to the Bloody
Sunday “mobilisers" that they join us in
the picket of Sheffield Town Hall, a
number of their supporters initially
agreed. But the leaders moved in to
quash any suggestion ol joint action,
hastily conjuring up a wimpy "alter-
native"— a "picket" to accompany
the submission of their pleading peti-
tion. deliberately scheduled to take
place an hour and a hall before our
proposed picket And when we mobi-
lised our forces to get there at the same
lime, these hardy souls vv rapped up their
banners and lied

As late as the Saturday afternoon
edition of the [Sheffield] Star, the
Bloody Sunday "mobilisers" stuck to
their story that coaches would be
lcav ing from Sheffield Poly fora march,
destination unstated. But on the Sun-
day. there were no coaches, mobilisers,
no march. Twenty minutes alter the
buses were meant to depart, two Sinn
Fein supporters showed up to announce
the cancellation of the march toanv who

Labour Council Anti-Irish Ban: Green Light for NF Provocation

Troops Out of Ireland Now! Crush the Fascists Through
Mass Trade-Union/Minority Mobilisation!

The National Front’s threat to stage a
race-hate anti-Irish provocation in
Sheffield Sunday 29 January must be
stopped! That these racist anti-working-
class scum dare even to show their faces
in this solidly pro-union, working class
city is the direct result of the green light
given them by the Labour-dominated
City Council's anti-Irish ban —

The Harrods [department store]
bombing was an indefensible act of
indiscriminate terrorism. Marxists op-
pose the strategy of individual terrorism
as a futile diversion from the task of
mobilising the masses, while defending
against state repression the perpetrators
of attacks aimed against military targets

and imperialist leaders But attacks like
the Harrods bombing, aimed against a
random civilian population, are simply
criminal acts. Such nationalist crimes
deepen and exacerbate national and
racial divisions within the working class.
But they pale beside the mass terrorism
of the imperialist ruling class. We
deplore the Harrods bombing — as we
deplore Ulster Protestant terror against
Catholics, as we deplore the razing of
countless Irish villages over the centu-
ries by English overlords, or Edward I’s

use of Yorkshire lev ies to massacre and
raze Berwick. The Celtic nations have
suffered the atrocities of English domi-
nation lor hundreds of years. But the
Labour Party leaders ol the "Socialist
Republic" rant only against those “who
adv ocatc. support or arc inv olved in the
taking of life of -civilians of Great
Britain." They amnesty the blood-
stained ruling class who invented
concentration camps and mass terror
bombing of civilian centres, who carried
out mass murder in India, blew up the

Belgrano. who “shoot to kill" in the
streets of Belfast day in and day out.
Scratch the "socialism” of Blunkctt and
you lind a "little England" chauvinist
Thatcher hardly needs the PTA [Pre-
vention ol Terrorism Act] when “lefts"
like Blunkett are around to do the dirty
work. We say: Damn you England —
leave the Irish alone! Troops out of
Ireland now! Smash the Prevention of
Terrorism Act! Trade union blacking
("hot-cargoing"] of military goods to
Northern Ireland! Not Green against
Orange, but class against class! For
anti-sectarian workers militias to com-
bat communal terror and imperialist
continued on page 10

17 FEBRUARY 1984

5

Black History Month— From the Archives of the Revolution

John Reed Speaks to Communist International 1920

Blacks and Reds

Lenin
addresses
Second
Congress of
Communist
International,
1920.

— -

' f ;

j

•m

Ihc “Manifesto of ihe Communist
International to the Workers of the
World." written by Leon Trotsky and
adopted by the Comintern’s First
Congress ( 1919). proclaimed: "Colonial
slaves of Africa and Asia! The hour of
proletarian dictatorship in Europe will
strike for you a< the hour of your own
emancipation!" The Bolsheviks had led
the Russian Revolution to victory by
championing and awakening the sub-
jugated nations of the tsarist empire.
Now they hammered home the need to
unite behind Communist banners the
struggle of oppressed peoples against
imperialism. This was a sharp break
from the traditions of social democracy,
which gave short shrill to the colonial
question and too often echoed the
bourgeoisie’s racist hypocritical talk of a
“civilizing mission ." Regarding the U.S.,
I emn urged American Communists to
reach out to the doubly oppressed black
masses with a program of special
demands: “The black question has
become an integral part of the world
revolution." declared the Comintern.

James P. Cannon, founder of
American 1 rolskyism and one of the
foremost leaders of the early Commu-
nist Party, stated categorically: “Every-
thing new on the Negro question came
from Moscow — after the Russian Revo-
lution began to thunder its demand
throughout the world for freedom and
equality for all national minorities, all
subject peoples and all races — for all the
despised and rejected of the earth” (see
" I he Russian Revolution and the Fight
for Black Liberation." Young Spar iacu s
No. III. September 19X3). Previously
American Socialists had been at best
“colorblind." as with Eugene Debs who
stated that “we have nothing special to
offer the Negro, and we cannot make
separate appeals to all the races. The
Socialist Party is the party of the whole
working class, regardless of color ..."
At worst, as with Victor Berger’s
reformist "sewer socialists." they shaded
over into open white racism. It was as

part of the Bolsheviks' struggle to
convince American Communists to
recognize the special oppression of
blacks as a matter of strategic impor-
tance that John Reed was designated, at
Lenin’s personal request, to report on
the “Negro Question" at the Communist
International’s Second Congress.

The popular movie Reds is a generally
faithful account of John Reed’s
evolution, under the impact of the
October Revolution, from America's
foremost radical journalist into a
committed Communist. But the movie
makes a serious omission. It notes
Reed’s desire to attend the Second
Congress in order to get the Comintern
mandate for his faction of the American
Communist movement and to argue
against work within the old ALL craft
unions. But Reds omits Reed's reports

at commission and congress sessions on
the national and colonial questions. In
his speech to the congress, reprinted
below. Reed powerfully portrayed the
Southern lynchings. Jim Crow segrega-
tion and the impact of proletarianiza-
tion and imperialist war on radicalizing
blacks. Here he made great strides in
transcending the Debsian tradition,
declaring that Communists must use the
rapidly growing race consciousness to
expose the lie of bourgeois equality and
draw oppressed minorities into the
struggle for socialist revolution.

It took a decade before Reed's
exhortation to the Communist Party to
take the lead in the struggle for black
emancipation was translated into ac-
tion. Although the CPUSA had by then
become fully Stalinized. raising its
diversionary "Third Period” call lor

"Negro self-determination in the Black
Belt." its recruitment of thousands of
militant blacks reflected the early
Comintern’s commitment to fight
against special oppression. The CP's
militant fight for black rights in the early
1930s. particularly around the racist
frame-up of the Scottsboro Boys, was
subsequently betrayed on the altar of
the popular front, of support to
Roosevelt and the racist Democratic
Party. Only the Trotskyists can rightful-
ly claim the Leninist heritage of revolu-
tionary mobilization of the oppressed.
Today. John Reed's stirring speech and
the Communist International’s clarion
call to the black masses arc carried
forward in the Spartacist League pro-
gram: Finish the Civil War — Forward
to a Workers State! Black Liberation
through Socialist Revolution!

SPEECH BY JOHN REED

In America there live ten million
Negroes who arc concentrated mainly in
the South. In recent years however
many thousands ol them have moved to

CPUSA

John Reed

the North. The Negroes in the North are
employed in industry while in the South
the ma jority are farm labourers or small
farmers. The position of the Negroes is
terrible, particularly in the Southern
states. Paragraph 16 ol the Constitution
of the United States grants the Negroes
full civil rights. Nevertheless most
Southern states deny the Negroes these
rights. In other states, where by law the
Negroes possess the right to vote, they
are killed il they dare to exercise this
right.

Negroes are not allowed to travel in
the same railway carriages as whites,
visit the same saloons and restaurants,
or live in the same districts. I here exist
special, and worse, schools for Negroes
and similarly special churches. This
separation of the Negroes is called the
"Jim Crow system." and the clergy in the
Southern churches preach about para-
dise on the “Jim Crow system." Negroes
arc used as unskilled workers in indus-
try. Until recently they were excluded
Irom most of the unions that belong to
the American Federation of Labour.

The IWW of course organized the
Negroes, the old Socialist Party how-
ever undertook no serious attempt to
organize them. In some states the
Negroes were not accepted into the
party at all. in others they were
separated off into special sections, and
in general the party statutes banned the

use of Party resources for propaganda
among Negroes.

In the South the Negro has no rights
at all and does not even enjoy the
protection of the law. Usually one can
kill Negroes without being punished
One terrible white institution is the
lynching of Negroes. T his happens in

Make checks payable/mail to:

Spartacist Publishing Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116

6

WORKERS VANGUARD

i he following manner I he Negro in
cote red with oil and strung up on a
telegraph pole I he whole ol the town,
men. women and children, run up to
watch the show and take home a piece ol
the clothing or the skin ol the Negro
they ha\c tortured to death “as a
souvenir."

I have too little time to explain the
historical background to the Negro
question in the United States I he
descendants ol the sln\c population,
who were liberated during the C'iul
War. when politically and economically
they were still completely underdevel-
oped. were later given lull political
rights in order to unleash a bitter class
struggle in the South which was in-
tended to hold up Southern capitalism
until the capitalists in the North were
able to bring together all the country’s
resources into their own possession.

Until recently the Negroes did not
show any aggressive class consciousness
at all. The first awakening ol the
Negroes took place alter the Spanish-
Ameriean War. in which the black
troops had fought with extraordinary
courage and from which they returned
with the feeling that as men they were
equal to the white troops. Until then the
only movement that existed among the
Negroes was a semi-philanthropic edu-
cational association led by Booker T.
Washington and supported by the white
capitalists. This movement found its
expression in the organization of
schools in which the Negroes were
brought up to be good servants of
industry. As intellectual nourishment
they were presented with the good
advice to resign themselves to the fate of
an oppressed people. During the Span-
ish War an aggressive reform movement
arose among the Negroes which de-
manded social and political equality
with the whites. With the beginning of
the European war half a million Negroes
who had joined the US Army were sent
to France, where they were billeted with
French troop detachments and sudden-
ly made the discovery that they were
treated as equals socially and in every
other respect. The American General
Staff approached the French High
Command and asked them to forbid
Negroes to visit places used by whites
and to treat them as second-class
people. After the war the Negroes, many
of whom had received medals for
bravery from the English and French
governments, returned to their South-
ern villages where they were subjected to
lynch law because they dared to wear
their uniforms and their decorations on
the street.

At the same time a strong movement
arose among the Negroes who had
stayed behind. Thousands of them
moved to the North, began to work in
the war industries and came into contact
with the surging current ol the labour
movement. High as they were, their
wage rates trailed behind the incredible
increases in the prices of the most
important necessities. Moreover the
Negroes were outraged by the way all
their strength was sucked out and the
terrible exertions demanded bv the
work much more than were the white
workers who had grown used to the
terrible exploitation in the course ol
many years.

I he Negroes went on strike alongside
the white workers and quicklyjoined the
industrial proletariat. They proved very
ready to accept revolutionary propa-
ganda At that time the newspaper
Messenger was founded, published by a
young Negro, the socialist Randolph,
and pursuing revolutionary propagan-
dist aims. This paper united socialist
propaganda with an appeal to the racial
consciousness ol the Negroes and with
the call to organize self-defence against
the brutal attacks ol the whites. At the
same time the paper insisted on the
closest links with the white workers,
regardless of the I act that the latter often

look part in Negro-baiting, and empha-
sized that the enmity between the white
and black races was supported by the
capitalists in their own interests.

The return ol the army from the front
threw many millions ol white workers
on to the labour market all at once I he
result was unemployment, and the
demobilized soldiers' impatience took
such threatening proportions that the
employers were Forced to tell the
soldiers that their jobs had been taken
by Negroes in order thus to incite the
whites to massacre the Negroes I he
lirst ol these outbreaks took place in
Washington, where civil servants I mm
the administration returning Irom the
war found their jobs occupied by
Negroes. I he civil servants were in the
main Southerners. They organized a
night attack on the Negro district in
order to terrorize the Negroes into
giving up their jobs. To everybody's
amazement the Negroes came on to the
streets fully armed A fight developed
and the Negroes lought so well that for
every dead Negro there were three dead
whites. Another revolt which lasted
several days and lei t many dead on both
sides broke out a few months later in
Chicago. Later still a massacre took
place in Omaha. In all these fights the
Negroes showed for the first time in
history that they are armed and splcn-

Spartacist Forums

Black History
and the

Class Struggle

Speaker Michael Haines

Spartacist League

Thursday, February 16, 7:00 p.m.

Harris Hall Auditorium
Virginia State University

PETERSBURG, VA

Friday, February 17, 12:00 noon

McKeldin Student Center Ballroom
Morgan State University
Co-sponsored by the Morgan Stale
Student Government Association
and Spartacus Youth League

BALTIMORE

For more information (202) 636-3537

SYL Film Showing & Discussion

“Finally Got the News”

Documentary on the League ol Revolution-
ary Black Workers and Ihe struggle ot black
aulo workers in Detroit during the late 60s

Wednesday, February 22, 7:00 p.m.

Wayne State University
SCB, Room 583

DETROIT

For more information (313) 961-1680

didly organized and are not at all air. ml
ol the whites I he results ol the Negroes'
resistance were first ol all a belated
intervention by the government and
secondly the* acceptance ol Negroes into
the unions til the American Federation
ol I abour

Racial consciousness grew among the
Negroes themselves At present there is
among the Negroes a section which
preaches the armed uprising ol the
Negroes against the whites I he Negroes
who returned home Irom the war have
set up associations everywhere lor sell -
dclcnce and to light against the white
supporters ol ly nch law I hecirculation
ol the \te\.senger is growing constantly
At present it sells 1X0. 001) copies
monthly At the same time, socialist
ideas have taken root and arc spreading
rapidly among the Negroes employed in
industry .

II we consider the Negroes as an
enslaved and oppressed people, then
they pose us with two tasks: on the one
hand a strong racial movement and on
the other a strong proletarian workers'
movement, whose class consciousness is
quickly growing. I he Negroes do not
pose the demand of national independ-
ence. A movement that aims lor a
separate national existence, like lor
instance the "back to Africa" movement
that could be observed a few years ago.

SYL Video Showing & Discussion

November 27, 1982: Labor/Black
Mobilization Stops the KKK

Blacks. Labor Need a
Workers Party—
Not Front Men for the
Racist Democrats

Wednesday, February 15
Noon-3:00 p.m.

(continuous showings)

University of Illinois, Chicago
CCC Room 506

Thursday, February 23, 1:40 p.m

Truman College, Room 1516

Speaker Tweet Carter

SL Central Committee

Thursday. March 1. 1:40 p.m.

Truman College. Room 1516

Speaker Bernard Vance

SL Central Committee

CHICAGO

For more information (312) 427-0003

is never successlul among the Ncgtocs
I hey hold themselves above all to be
Americans, they led at home in the
I nited Stales I hat simplifies the tasks
ol the communists considerably

Ihe only correct policy lor the
American Communists towards the
Negroes is to regard them above all as
workers Ihe agricultural workers and
the small larmers ol the South pose,
despite the backwardness ol the Ne-
groes. the same tasks as those we ha vein
respect to the white rural proletariat
C ommunist propaganda can be carried
out among the Negroes who are em-
ployed as industrial workers in the
North In both parts ol the country we
must strive to organize Negroes in ihe
same unions as the whites I his is the
best and quickest way to root out racial
prejudice and awaken class solidarity
I he Communists must not stand
alool Irom the Negro movement which
demands their social and political
equality anil at the moment, at a timeol
the rapid growth ol racial conscious-
ness. is spreading rapidly among Ne-
groes. Ihe Communists must use this
movement to expose the lie ol bourgeois
equality and emphasize the necessity ol
the social revolution which will not only
liberate all workers Irom serv itude hut is
also the only way to tree the enslaved
Negro people ■

SYL Video Showing & Discussion

November 27, 1982:

"We Stopped the Klan!"

Black History
and the

Class Struggle

Thursday. February 23, 7:30 p m.

Malcolm X Lounge Hartley Hall
Columbia University
Sponsored Oy the Spartacus Youth League
and the Black Students Organization

NEW YORK

For more information 12121 267-1025

SYL Forum

Blacks. Labor Need a Workers Party

Jesse Jackson:
Front Man for the
Racist Democrats

Speaker Bernard Vance

SL Central Committee

Saturday. February 25, 7:30 p.m.

Memorial Union

(see "Today in the Union' for location)

MADISON

For more information (312) 427-0003

Black History Month
Spartacist Events

17 FEBRUARY 1984

7

Save Iranian Tudeh Leaders!

Three senior military officers, mem-
bers of Iran's pro-Moscow Tudeh
("Masses") parly, have been sentenced
to death by a military tribunal, accord-
ing to the Iranian news agency (New
York Timex, 5 February). The an-
nouncement came on the heels of the
sentencing of 87 Tudeh members in the
army to prison terms ranging from a
year to life on trumped-up charges of
espionage and subversion. The fate of
jailed Tudeh parly leader Nureddin
Kianuri and former navy commander
Bahram Afzali. also a I udeh member,
has not yet been revealed But the
unleashing of Ayatollah Khomeini’s
terror against his former Stalinist
flunkies, a blow aimed at the So\iet
Union, exposes the lundamentally anti-
Communist character ol the so-called
“Islamic revolution."

While Tudeh now tries to explain its
declining fortunes by referring to
anonymous "right-wing forces" and
"enemies ol the resolution." the fact is
that the live-year-old Khomeini-led
"revolution" has all along been a
reactionary movement led by fanatic
Muslim mullahs who openly pro-
claimed their goal of taking Iran back to
the seventh century But the I udeh
party, along with the entire so-called
“left." turned a blind eye to this in order
to curry favor with the ayatollah. So
while Khomeini suppressed the Kurds
and other nationalities, forced women
back into the veil, executed homosexu-
als and other “deviants.” arrested and
shot the populist Mujahedin and leftist
groups — an estimated 10.000 men and
women have been executed thus lar —
the Tudeh party cheered, with the
blessing of the Moscow Stalinist
leaders.

Indeed. Kianuri rose to leadership
back in 1979 because Moscow consid-
ered him to be more conciliatory to
Khomeini than was his predecessor As
the sordid border war between Iran and
Iraq dragged on. the Tudeh party told
its members to report to their mosques
(!) for military duty under the pa sda ran.
and the party denounced strikes as
"sabotage" of the “anti-imperialist"

struggle. As late as November 1981
Kianuri was proclaiming "total support
to the people’s anti-imperialist policy of
Imam Khomeini.” who was then crack-
ing down on the Mujahedin

Apparently Tudeh hoped that the
ayatollah’s need for a few 20th century
minds to run the government apparatus
would bring them some posts and
influence, and for a short time that was
the case, but this reformist treachery
turned on its practitioners. In February
1983 the central party leadership was
arrested and charged with “espionage"
while 18 Soviet diplomats were sudden-
ly expelled from the country Party
leader Kianuri was paraded on televi-
sion. where he “confessed" to the
charges — many said he appeared
drugged and under extreme pressure,
though it's possible he was only continu-
ing the Stalinist line of loyalty to the
“imam." By December over 10.0(H)
Tudeh members were reported to have
been arrested

The war against "godless” Commu-
nism. proclaimed by Khomeini’s
support to the guerrilla war of Afghan
mullahs against the Soviet Red Army,
has now been brought home. As we
warned back in 1979

".. detente between I eheran and Mos-
cow will not be enough lo save the
I udeh party Irom Islamic repression
Can there be any doubt that once
Khomeini has succeeded in consolidat-
ing his rule and repressing the far left he
will also move to smash Tudeh?"

—“Moscow Stalinists Cheer
Khomeini’s Witchhunt.”

WV No. 231. II May 1979

Our slogan then was “Down with the
shah, down with the mullahs! For
workers revolution!" Now more than
ever, the several-million-strong Iranian
proletariat, centered on the powerful oil
workers, must take action not only to
defend itself but also to defend the
Soviet Union, the world's lirst workers
state, which shares a 1.500-mile border
with Iran. Demand freedom lor Tudeh
members and all leftist victims of
Khomeini’s repression!

Tudeh’s fatal policy in Iran is in fact a
blurred carbon copy of the standard and

disastrous Stalinist "two-stage" theory
ol revolution, in which the first stage
involves unity with the so-called "pro-
gressive" bourgeoisie, such as Chiang
Kai-shek in China in the 1920s. in order
to make the “democratic” revolution.
1 he result in China was Chiang’s bloody
massacre of Communists in 1927. and
the result in Iran appears headed in the
same direction. But in Iran, this Stalinist
policy has reached a new low. as it
involves unity with the openly reaction-

Sygma

Khomeini’s white terror at work.

ary. medievalist mullahs, who are
declared enemies of every democratic
principle, however minimal.

Meanwhile. the sell-proclaimed
"1 rotsky ists" of the Revolutionary
Workers Party (HKE). affiliated to the
lake "Fourth International" of Ernest
Mandel and Jack Barnes, have tried to
outdo the Stalinists in supporting
Shi'ite terror. In a mealy-mouthed
“defense" of Tudeh victims, the HKE
practically excuses the Khomeiniite
repression- “ . the charges against them
[Tudeh] seem completely logical and
natural to popular opinion and particu-
larly to militant Muslims"! The HKE
gently advises the prosecutors that the
Tudeh is “like a thorn in the side of the
revolution" and “the present course of

policy against the IP [Tudeh party]
amounts to going after the revolution
with a hammer rather than using
twee/ers to extract the thorn" ("Iran
regime vs. the Tudeh Party." fruerconii-
nental Press. 26 December 1983). Such
disgusting treachery for the “imam" will
not of course save the HKE. just as it
failed to save the Tudeh — in fact. HKE
leaders Bahram Ali Atai and Mo-
hammed Bagher Falsali have been in tail
for a year and a hall, while the HKE's
No. I spokesman. Babak Zahraic.
former editor of their newspaper Kar-
gar, has been prohibited from receiving
visitors and correspondence for the past
year he has been in jail! We demand that
even these vile social-chauvinists be
freed from the prisons of Islamic
reaction.

The “Islamic revolution" was never
“anti-imperialist" but Koranic reaction
incarnate. II it made trouble for the
"Great Satan" (the USA), it was under
the Hag of Persian chauvinism and
religious mysticism. In any case the
collection of mullah fanatics and ba/aar
merchants who run Iran have in
common with Western capitalism and
the Reaganite terrorists that they all see
the “godless" Soviet Union as an "e\il
empire." Even the U S. State Depart-
ment has sensed this, looking the other
way as hundreds of millions ofdollars in
American arms and spare parts have
been shipped to Iran via third parlies
such as Israel and South Korea. Ele-
ments of the U.S. rulingclassargue that,
despite all the "Great Satan" baiting, the
mullahs' fundamental hostility to the
Soviet Union can overcome their anti-
Americanism. A member ol the Council
on Foreign Relations. Elaine Sciolino.
writing in the prestigious Foreign
Affairs (Spring 1983) points out

“Over time a gradual return to the
historic perception of a serious Soviet
threat could incline this regime [in Iran]
or its successor to the time-honored
strategy ol offsetting such a proximate
Soviet threat with ties to a distant and
Iricndly supporting power."

The tasks ol the Iranian workers
revolution are intertw ined with defense
of the Soviet degenerated workers state.
It will take a Trotskyist party to
establish proletarian rule in Iran; not
“two stages" but permanent revolu-
tion-seizure of power by the Iranian
working class supported by the peas-
antry to form a workers and peasants
government. ■

PDC

Jazz Benefit...

(continued from page 4)

D C on November 27th Labor/black
mobilization in Oakland last October
29th saw to it that one of the charges
against Ray and me has already been
dropped " And they applauded her
statement that "Ray and I aren’t the
criminals The criminals are Ma Bell,
the San Leandro police, the Alameda
County District Attorney and that

maniac cowboy in the White House too.
Down with South Africa-style justice!
Picket lines mean don't cross!"

The emcee introduced Tony Marti-
nez, president ol Capital Branch 142 of
the National Association of Letter
Carriers, who saw to it that flyers for the
benefit were distributed throughout the
post office by union stewards. Subse-
quently the union heard PDC represen-
tatives at its February 6 local meeting
and voted to make a financial contribu-
tion to the Partisan Defense Committee.
Herson also introduced popular local
blues singer Nap Turner, who plugged

the anti-Klan victory benefit over his
WPFW (Pacifica) radio show Another
WPFW announcer spoke with SI
representatives about the case of his
friend. American Indian Loren Thom-
as. a victim of the recent wave of racist
killings by Washington police (sec "Jail
the Killer Cops! D C. Cops on Racist
Terror Rampage.” WV No. 346, 20
January 1984).

Terrell Allen, president of the Duke
Ellington Society, one of the largest jazz
associations in the country, was there
with his friends. He helped publicize the
benefit throughout D C jazz circles. A
South African student attending How-
ard U niversity said he had been listening
to Person since he was seven years old
over the black South African station
"Radio S R " which opens at 5:00 a.m.
every morning with his rendition of
"Stormy Weather." Houston adds that
South African blacks are among his
biggest fans.

T wenty-three benefit tickets were sold
to Howard students, many of whom
helped defend the SYL against Reagan
lackey and Howard U. president James
Cheek’s crackdown on student protest.
Check had had Spartacist supporters
arrested and barred from the campus as
“outside agitators." stemming from an
SYL protest over Reagan's invasion of
Grenada and U.S. intervention in
Lebanon. T he fundraiser also deepened
the SL/SYL’s. roots in this 70 percent
black city Several people who met and
worked with the SI at the November 27
anti-Klan demo called up when they

heard about the benefit and helped
make the evening a real success. The
PDC took in some $1,500 from the
benefit.

Lhe SL/SYL and PDC extend their
most heartfelt gratitude to Houston
Person. Etta Jones and the other fine
musicians in the group, organist David
Braham and drummer Frankie Jones.
Thanks to them, to the hard work of the
comrades and the enthusiastic response
of all those who came out. it was a
thoroughly enjoyable evening in the
service of labor and black struggle. ■

z s

Spartacist League/
Spartacus Youth League
Public Offices

-MARXIST LITERATURE -

Bay Area

Fri 5 00-8 00 pm, Sat 3 00-6 00 pm
1634 Telegraph, 3rd Floor (near 17th Street)
Oakland, California Phone (415) 835-1535

Chicago

Tues 5 30-9 00 pm , Sat 2 00-5 30pm
523 S Plymouth Court, 3rd Floor
Chicago, Illinois Phone (312) 427-0003

New Ybrk City

Tues 6 00-9 00 p m , Sat 12 00-4 00 p m
41 Warren St (one block below
Chambers St near Church St.)

New York, N Y Phone (212) 267-1025

Trotskyist League
of Canada

Toronto

Sat 1:00-5 00 p m

299 Queen St W , Suite 502

Toronto, Ontario Phone (416) 593-4138

^ /

WORKERS VANGUARD

Marxist Working-Class Biweekly of the Spartacist League

S5’24 issues ol Workers Vanguard
(includes Spartacist) international rates
New Renewal *20/24 issues Airmail
$5/24 issues— Seamaii

$2'9 issues ot Young Spartacus

Name

□ $2/4 issues ot

Women and Revolution

LI $2/10 introductory issues of
Workers Vanguard
(includes Spartacist )

Address

City

Phone ( )

State

Zip.

348

Make checks payable/mall to: Sparfaclat Publishing Co., Bo* 1377 GPO, New York. NY 10116

8

WORKERS VANGUARD

Druze vs. French Foreign Legion

II e reprint below excerpts from
Hcnnett Don 's I he I cgion of the
Damned on the buttle ol Messifre in
Syria. 1925.

At their head rode the Emir on a
beautiful blooded stallion. Me wore a
medieval suit ol armor and a helmet
with flaps of chain-mail like those in
museums, one used hundreds ol
years ago against the Krankish
crusaders.

I was scared witless

At first I thought I was shooting
badly Then little by little I saw that
with several bullets in them, these
lunatic Druse tribesmen came on. to
die on our barbed wire. And the
wounded kept on fighting. Bleeding
to death. Irom behind a stone or even
in the open, they kept tiring till the
last convulsive twitch.

— reprinted in Soldier <1/ fortune,
October 1983

Lebanon...

(continued Irom page / )

loi his I ebanon poliev and a haunting
reminder ol the C arter administration’s
la 1 lu rc in Iran.

the Reagan administration, lor all
its tough talk, was unable to succeed in
its most visible foreign-policy venture."

While the American ruling class debates
"Who l ost I ebanon?" (the Democratic
Congress and its War Powers Resolu-
tion. replied a Journal editorial), the
simple fact is there was no Lebanon to
lose. All ol King Reagan's Marines and
all ol his battleships and tough talk
couldn't put the artificial country back
together again. As for Lebanese "presi-
dent" Gemayel. he has ceased even being
“mayor of Beirut.”

Ronald Reagan’s Lebanon adventure
has turned into a lirst-class debacle. The
self-appointed sheriff of world imperial-
ism shot himsell in the foot and is
hobbling away. But the global repercus-
sions arc by no means all to the good.
The Reagan gang will want to wipeout
their humiliation by launching a bloody
adventure somewhere where the odds
are more in their favor. Remember how
the U.S. raped the tiny black West
Indian isle of Grenada in order to divert
attention from the devastating truck-
bomb attack on Marine HQ in Beirut
last October. Lebanon was a long-shot
gamble in the anti-Soviet war drive, one
which the Pentagon always considered a
no-win situation. The humiliation in
Beirut will intensify the Reagan gang's
drive to drown in blood the insurgent
masses of Central America.

Unlike the squalid communalist
bloodletting in Lebanon — between
Christians and Muslims. Shi’ites and
Palestinians. Druze and everyone — in
Central America a potential social
revolution is at stake. Salvadoran
workers and peasants are fighting (and
beating) a blood-drenched oligarchy
and its Yankee protectors. A rout of the
puppet dictatorship by leftist guerrillas
in El Salvador would pose the threat of
direct U.S. military intervention. The
CIA's contras are now ravaging Nicara-
gua. while 5.000 U.S. combat troops are
poised for attack across the border in
Honduras. While the Democrats and
reformist leftists see the Marine with-
drawal from Lebanon as a retreat from
foreign military adventurism, in reality
it only makes more urgent the need to
organize working-class opposition to
the American war drive in Central
America — boycotting military cargo
bound for right-wing regimes, and labor
strikes against U.S. intervention.

Lebanon: Not a Country
But a Deal

I he workers of the world have a side
in the revolutionary struggles now
engulfing Central America. But they do
not lake sides in the Lebanese blood
feuds, the endless succession of commu-
nal massacres and retaliations. Lebanon
is not a nation nor even a country, but a
deal among the imperialists ( 1919) and
between the imperialists and the various
Christian and Muslim clan chiefs
(1943). One is reminded ol the descrip-
tion ol Austria between the two world
wars as a "situation [that was] fatal but
not serious."

The entity known as Lebanon was
created by the French, who together
with the British carved up the Ottoman
empire in the Near East after World
War I They sought to fashion a pro-
Western enclave in the Levant by
combining the predominantly Christian
Mount Lebanon with a subordinate
Muslim hinterland, part of it (notably
the Bekaa Valley) extracted from the
province of Syria. The French colonial-
ist system of Maronite privilege was
preserved after Lebanon became inde-
pendent. Under the so-called National
Covenant the president would always be
a Maronite Christian, the prime minis-
ter a Sunni Muslim, the head of the
Chamber of Deputies a Shi’ite Muslim.

and so on. I he Christians were allocated
a six-to-live majority in parliament, and
more importantly the ollicer caste ol the
I ebanese army was drawn predomi-
nantly from the Maronite elite.

Since the Muslims* birthrate out-
stripped the Christians' lor a couple ol
generations, the deal that was I ebanon
I ell apart b\ the beginning ol the 1970s.
I he mass ol impoverished and dow n-
trodden Shi’ites. who had become the
largest scciarian/communal grouping,
demanded a change in the constitution
to redress the balance of political and
economic power in their favor. Further,
the OPEC oil boom of the early 1970s,
which Lebanon shared as the main
financial center and entrepot for the
Arab East, widened the disparities
between rich and poor in this bankers’
republic. Shi'ite peasants from the
countryside and migrant workers from
Syria streamed into Beirut and other
port cities looking for work, producing
a class of desperate slum dwellers.
American liberal academic Stanley
Reed described Maronitc-dominated
Lebanon on the eve of the 1 975-76 civil
war:

“The conflict occurred because Leba-
non's political and economic structure
cheated too many people in too many
wavs. The Maronite businessmen and
bankers who dominated the country
refused to part with any of their huge
profits derived Irom handling oil
money — I he system lhat gave the
presidency and the command of the
army to the Maronites became a symbol
of injustice to the have-nots and the
leftists, both consisting largely of
Moslem city dwellers. What began as
a social revolution has obviously taken
on many other meanings. For instance,
the leftist militia leaders who set out to
topple the old warlords have wound up
emulating them."

— New York Times. 9 July 1982

In early 1975 Lebanon stood on the
brink of a revolutionary upheaval which
could have radically altered the political
situation in the entire region, most
immediately by extending itself to Syria.
But a revolutionary outcome was
diverted by the traditional Muslim clan
chiefs (abetted by the Palestinian
nationalist leaders) into a decade-long
series of bloody squabbles between the
various communal groups. The Levant
correspondent for the snide London
Economist (5 November 19X3) neatly
captured the essence of Lebanese
politics when he wrote of the “national
reconciliation" conference in Geneva
last fall:

“To compare this week’s conference of
I ebanese faction bosses in Geneva with
a gathering of Mafia godfathers might
be unfair to the Mafia, because it has
never eliminated several hundred vic-
tims in a single day. There can seldom
have been so many delegates around a
table who were directly and personally
responsible for killing the followers of
fellow delegates.”

All Sides Squalid

Today in Lebanon the Reaganites
present the Druze and Shi’ites as
nothing but surrogates for the Syrians,
who arc in turn labeled surrogates for
the Soviets, while the Maronite Chris-
tian Phalange are supposedly the true
defenders of Western-style democracy.

I he reformist left, on the other hand,
presents the squalid communal Lighting
in Lebanon as a war of national
liberation in which the entire people
rises up against Yankee invaders. Thus
Sam Marcy’s Workers World Party
wrote:

"Different religious and ethnic groups,
different political parties ranging Irom
conservative to revolutionary, have
united in their opposition to Gemayel
and his U.S . French and other imperi-
alist backers."

— Workers World.

I 7 November 1983

The reality looks considerably different
from these fictions. The myriad ethnic/
religious/communal groups in Leba-
non. far from being united, have every
one of them been in treacherous,
murderous alliance with and against
every other one. Let l. ebanon be
Lebanon and this is what you get.

lake supposed Lebanese "progres-
sive" leader Walid Jumblatt. a vice
president of the Second International.
His “Progressive Socialist Party" is
actually a communalist party ol the
estimated 350.000 Dru/e (an esoteric
sect derived from Shi'a Islam) in
Lebanon. In the 1860s some 10.000
Maronite peasants were massacred
when they rose up against Druze
landlords; and last fall the Druze
besieged some 20.000 Christians in the
town ol Deir al Qamar. In the mid-’70s
Walid’s father Kamal Jumblatt was
head of the largely Muslim National
Movement, allied with the Palestinians
in the 1975-76 Lebanese civil war With
the Israeli invasion in June 1982,
however, the younger Jumblatt de-
clared, “The PLO [Palestine Liberation
Organization] as it used to be in
Lebanon is finished.” and told PLO
fighters to lay down their arms. The
Druze chieftain established friendly
relations with the Israeli occupying
army, and last summer promised to
keep Palestinian guerrillas out of his
feudal fiefdom in exchange for Israeli
withdrawal from the Shuf. Due to
Phalangisi president Gemayel’s refusal
to cut a deal. Walid is currently aligned
with Syrian president Assad, who.
however, was responsible for the assas-
sination of the elder Jumblatt.

The estimated one million Shi’itesare
at the bottom of the social scale in
Lebanon, but the notion that they are
agents of an international Communist
conspiracy run from Moscow (or
alternatively a patriotic leftist force) is
even more absurd. In the'75-’76 fighting
the Shi’ite “Movement of the Dis-
possessed" (which later became the
Amal) was loosely associated with the
Palestinian-Muslim bloc. Yet on the eve
of the June '82 Israeli invasion the Amal
was engaged in bloody battles against
the PLO and the Lebanese Communist
Party. They were pushed into oppo-
sition by the Zionist army terrorizing
their stronghold in southern Lebanon.
Only when GemaycFs army began
indiscriminately shelling the Shi'ite
suburbs of Beirut at the end of January
did they finally “unite" w ith Jumblatt &
Co. Shi’ite militiamen celebrated their
“liberation" of West Beirut by smashing
all whiskey bottles — shades of Khomei-
ni! Any Soviet KGB agent who fooled
around with this gang of reactionary
Islamic fundamentalists would proba-
bly be skinned alive.

The half million or so Palestinian
refugees have been largely out of the
current fighting, ha\ing been disarmed
by the imperialists (at the request of the
PLO leadership, which chose to run
rather than fight the Israelis inside
Beirut). Though PLO chief Arafat has
long been a hero of Western leftists, in
his shifting alliances the nationalist
leader has embraced some of the most
reactionary forces in the region; in
October 1983 Arafat sided with a local
sheik in Tripoli as the latter was
massacring Lebanese CPers. Currently
lacking any military muscle. Arafat is
trying to work out an arrangement with
the Israelis together with Egypt’s Mu-
barak and Jordan’s Hussein, two of
Washington’s main Arab clients.

On the other hand, the Christian
Maronite Phalange is an openly fascistic

force whose militias have nothing to
learn from the Salvadoran death squads
when it comes to barbarity. Yet the
Phalange hardly represents the whole of
the Maronite population; former Mar-
onite president Suleiman Franjieh
(whose son was murdered by the
Phalange) is currently in Damascus with
Jumblatt seeking Syrian favor. And the
500. 000 Maronites are only a third of
Lebanon's Christian population (which
includes Greek Orthodox. Greek Cath-
olics. Armenians and other sects).
Moreover, before the communal civil
war, the Lebanese leltist groups, nota-
bly the CP. typically drew much of their
cadre from the Christian communities
while many downtrodden Shi’ites were
recruited into their ranks. While they
sided with the Muslim warlords in ’75-
’76. the result was the destruction of the
lei t as a significant political force as
Lebanon was increasingly polarized
along communal lines.

As for Syria, far Irom being a Soviet
juggernaut in the Near East, the Assad
regime is extremely fragile and plays its
own game in regional politics. Based on
the Alawite sect (only 10 percent of the
population), in 1982 Assad destroyed
Syria's fourth-largest city. Hama, kill-
ing at least 20.000 of its inhabitants, in
order to exterminate the Sunni-based
Muslim Brotherhood. Syria first inter-
vened in Lebanon in 1976 on behalf of
the Maronite Christians with the sup-
port of both Washington and Jerusa-
lem. This shifted the balance of forces,
setting up the gruesome massacre of
Palestinians at the huge Tel Zaatar
camp by the Gemayels' Phalange and
other Maronite gangs. And who has the
Syrian army in Lebanon been fighting in
recent months? U.S. Marines? The
French Foreign Legion? The Israel
"Defense Force”? No, the Arafat-loyal
PL.O. In December. Syrian-backed
forces laid waste to two Palestinian
refugee camps in northern Lebanon,
killing an estimated 700 and wounding
thousands ol defenseless refugees and
Lebanese Muslims while the Zionists
cheered.

In short, the Lebanese political scene
is a swamp. While Reagan wanted to use
the U.S. "peacekeeping" troops as a
continued on page 10

CORRECTIONS

Regarding the article “Defend
the Scoundrel! Village Voice's
Cockburn Up a Creek" ( WV No.
346. 20 January). Alexander Cock-
burn informs us that Emma Roth-
schild is not the mother of his child,
as we had incorrectly stated. We
apologize for the error And we look
forward to being able to read more
contributions from Alexander
Cockburn on Arab-lsraeli matters
and Near Eastern issues in general.

The article “Fight Cold War II
Witchhunt! Why Reagan Needs
‘Terrorism”’ (WV No. 347, 3 Feb-
ruary) unfortunately omitted a
concluding sentence: "And for

those of you with not much to lose
and a lot to win. and with the
requisite guts, let's get rid of this
whole damn system!"

17 FEBRUARY 1984

9

U S. battleship New Jersey opened up massive bombardment of Druze
villages to cover Marines’ humiliating withdrawal from Beirut.

Lebanon...

(continued front page 9)

springboard to achieve an anti-Soviet
Pax Americana in the Near East, he
only succeeded in sinking deeper into
the quicksand of Lebanese politics. The
pseudo-socialists (Communist Party.
Socialist Workers Party. Workers
World, etc.) who pretend that there is an
“anti-imperialist struggle" going on in
the midst of the communal slaughter in
Lebanon are following their usual
practice ol cheering for the murderous
nationalists ol “progressive" Third
World peoples (here identified \uth the
Muslims, as opposed to the supposedh
inherently reactionary Christians). And
they are trying to cover their own
complicity in calling lor or refusing to
protest the entry of the imperialist forces
in the first place ( August-September
19X2). As we wrote last fall:

“At bottom the present lighting in
I ebanon is a continuation of the
centuries-old communal/sectarian con-
llicts between Muslims and Christians.
Sunnis and Shi'ites. Druzc and others.
A victors ol the 'other side' (whoexer
that is ai an> gixen momenl)against the
I S and the Phalange would simpb
lead to new conflicts and deals among
the myriad leudalist warlords ol I eba-
non. restoring conditions more or less
as they existed before the Israeli in-
vasion ol June 19X2.”

—“Rape of Grenada. Hloodx
Mess in I ebanon.” M I
No. 341. 4 November 19X3

Israel Out of Lebanon and the
Occupied Territories!

A few months before the present
collapse of the Gemayel "government.”
former Israeli chief of staff Mordcchai
Gur warned:

the U S hope for establishing a
strong central government in Lebanon
is unrealistic. No foreign military
intervention can accomplish that—
certainly not the U S Marines, whose
force is so small that nobody takes it
seriously

— Ven.vnreA. 19 December 19X3
The Israelis should know, since they
tried and failed with far greater military
forces to impose a Phalange govern-
ment on Lebanon. They adroitly sucked
in the Americans with talk of an easy
anti-Soviet victory. And then to mini-
mize their own casualties, they pulled
back from the Beirut area last Septem-
ber to a buffer zone south of the Awali
River while Reagan's Marines were
left holding the bag. The Israeli generals
were no doubt laughing up their sleeves
after the Beirut Marine headquarters
bombing last October, but now they’re
getting worried as the U.S. prepares to
pull out,

The Israeli army has its hands full
with the 700.000 hostile, predominantly
Shi'ite Muslim Arabs in southern
Lebanon (now called the “North
Bank”). The Israelis thought they could
treat Lebanese Muslims like they do

Palestinians in the occupied West
Bank — internal passports. armed

searches, wanton brutality against the
Arab population. But the Lebanese
have not been cowed by almost 20 years
of military terror, and they do not live in
rclugec camps I hey ow n their ow n land
and increasingly they are resisting the
Zionist jackboot:

“Many ol southern Lebanon's 700.000
Muslims arc being radicalized by
religious leaders advocating violence,
including suicide attacks, as a way of
driving out the Israeli occupation
force."

— l.os Angeles rimes.

12 December 19X3

So what is Shamir going to do? Tap
Brooklyn for 5.000 more machine
gunners in yarmulkes? Form 9.000
armed Jewish settlements? Meanwhile.
Major Haddad's death has left Israel’s
Einsatzgruppe in southern Lebanon
without a leader

Israel is paying a high price— far
higher than Sharon and Begin
expected— in both money and blood for
the Lebanon adventure, and this is
polarizing the Hebrew population The
invasion/occupation is sapping the
morale of the army, including the
officers, who are no longer the cocky
world-beaters of yesteryear. Time (13
February) recently reported one Israeli
soldier in Lebanon crying out: “I don’t
want to be killed here It's crazy. They
are crazy. We are crazy.”

The bloody course of Zionist expan-
sionism contains the seeds of its own
destruction. But with madmen like
Begin. Sharon and Shamir sitting on a
nuclear arsenal, the working masses of
the Near East and the world cannot wait
for the eventual disintegration of
"Greater Israel.” The Hebrew working
class must be broken from Zionism
before it's too late. For a binational
Palestinian workers state as part of a
socialist federation of the Near East!

Near East Flashpoint for
World War III

Reaganite demagogues feel betrayed
by the Marine pullout from Beirut For

them it means memories of frantic
humiliation — those helicopters whirling
out of the U.S. embassy compound in
Saigon, with ARVN officers pushing
aside women and children to climb
aboard For right-wing commentator
Patrick Buchanan, speaking on ABC-
I V's Nightline (X February) “cutting
bait” in Lebanon represents nothing less
than the decline and fall of the West:
"President Gemayel must be reflecting
tonight on the great truism from the
Vietnam era — although it is often
dangerous to be an enemy of the
Americans, to be their friend is fatal.

I he impending Marine withdrawal
toward the ships ol the Sixth Fleet
recalls a similar episode some 700 years
ago when the last of the crusaders sailed
away, leaving Christians of the home-
land to the mercy of the Mamelukes [!].
In one lifetime we have witnessed the
winding down ol the last great Crusade
of the West.”

But Lebanon is not Vietnam. The
Indochinese war was a social revolution;
in the Levant the U.S. is bogged down in
a quagmire of communal and sectarian
warfare. In Vietnam, the class interests
of the proletariat were clear, and our
side — the heroic workers and peasants
who had fought imperialism, colonial-
ism and its local puppets for 30 years —
won decisively. That is why Vietnam
was a historic defeat for American
imperialism, sapping its political, mili-
tary. moral and economic capital. In
fact, the resulting "Vietnam syndrome"
has been the most compelling compo-
nent of the wave of pessimism and
defeatism that has become dominant in
the U.S. bourgeoisie over Lebanon.
They simply believe that no matter what
happens, they’re likely to lose again.

Reagan wants to bring back the
“American Century." the pre-Vietnam
military-political arrogance of U.S.
imperialism, in preparation for war
against the Soviet Union. He wants to
regain the nuclear superiority the U.S.
held at the time of the Cuban missile
crisis ol 1962. and this time he wants to
use it. The problem for Reagan is that
the Russians aren’.t going to let the
United States achieve that kind of
strategic military superiority again, and
they have the wherewithal to prevent it.
Influential sections of the American
ruling class arc starting to balk at the
trillion-dollar war budgets for weapons
that don't work. While Reagan embarks
on an escalating campaign of provoca-
tion— from KAL Flight 007 to crippling
a Russian sub on the high seas— he can’t
seem to win on the battlefield anywhere
except tiny Grenada. But while he can’t
put Lebanon back together undera U.S.
puppet. Reagan can blow up the world
Reagan is stung by his debacle in
Lebanon, and this could make the
imperialist beast even more dangerous
Particularly with the death of Soviet
leader Yuri Andropov, the demonolo-
gists in the White House may imagine
that the Kremlin will be paralyzed. U.S.
imperialism's truly evil empire, the mass
murderers of Hiroshima and My Lai.
may strike back anywhere on the globe.

It could be Central America. Or. as the
heavy guns pound away at Syrian
positions, it could just as well be in the
Near East, where several thousand
Russian advisers are stationed less than
100 miles from the Sixth Fleet. After all.

many ol today’s Lebanon “doves” arc
committed Near East hawks Remem-
ber. it was the Democratic Carter
administration that proclaimed the U.S,
had "strategic interests” in the Persian
Ci nil equivalent to its control ol the
Panama Canal.

I he Near E ast could be the llashpomt
lor WOrld War III In point ol fact, the
most massive mobilization ol U.S. naval
power since World War II (morethan65
ships in the eastern Mediterranean and
oil the Persian Gulf) remains in place
As Henry Kissinger (along with many
others) has pointed out. the endemic
and explosive national antagonisms ol
the region make it resemble the Balkans
before World War I But unlike the
inter-imperialist rivalries that engen-
dered that slaughter, there is a class line
between the two major world powers
presently confronting each other the
bloody imperialist United States and the
bureaucratically degenerated Soviet
xxorkers state. We warn ol the danger of
a new world war. instigated by the
capitalists who live in mortal Icar of new
social revolutions Most of all. with
their military stretched across the globe
and the worst economic crisis since the
Circat Depression still lingering on. the
imperialists fear proletarian class
struggle at home which could frustrate
their war preparations and bring the
whole damn system tumbling down
Defend the Soviet Union! U.S. Out of
the Near East! Yankee Imperialists—
Hands Olf the World! ■

“Bloody

Sunday”...

(continued from page 5)

rampage in Northern Ireland! No to
forcible reunification! Ireland will only
have a future as a workers republic in a
socialist federation of the British Isles!

Make no mistake about it: the “anti-
terrorist” hysteria is targetted at every
minority, at every militant trade union-
ist. at every opponent of the imperialist
war drive against the Soviet Union. It is
orchestrated by the same people who
witchhunt Arthur Scargill for telling the
simple truth about warmongers Reagan
and Thatcher and for correctly labelling
their favourite "trade union.” Polish
Solidarnosc. anti-socialist: the same
people who denounce NGA strikersand
militant miners defending picket lines as
"violent lawbreakers"; the same people
who hounded the Bradford I2and stage
racist deportations. And taking his cue
is lapdog Blunkett Is it any surprise that
six months ago this same "realistic”
“socialist" was red-baiting the reformist
Revolutionary Communist Party and
the revolutionary Marxist Spartacist
League as "disruptive." throwing "CIA
agent smears at the Soviei-defencist
SI

The NF is looking foranother Bloody
Sunday — with our blood! Irish, blacks.
Asians, an army ol Scots storming dow n
across the border like Wallace and the
Black Douglas did — all marching be-
hind the power of organised labour—
that’s what’s needed this Sunday. Let’s
bash the fascists! To hell with Blunkett’s
ban! What's at stake is the right of
opponents of English imperialism,
workers and minorities to organise and
demonstrate. Remember what Marx
said ol Ireland and the English working
class: “A nation which oppresses anoth-
er cannot be free.” Slop the fascist
swine! Drive them into the sewers! The
need lor the unity of English and Irish
workers, all Celtic minorities, blacks.
Asians — all those targetted by the
fascists could not be posed more
clearly than it is this weekend. Troops
out of Ireland now! For a mass trade-
union/minority mobilisation on Bloody
Sunday to crush the fascist anti-Irish
provocation!

Spartacist League/Britain

24 January 19X4

WORKERS VANGUARD

SPARTACIST LEAGUE/ U.S. LOCAL DIRECTORY

National Office

Bo* 1377. GPO
New York, NY 10116
(212) 732-7860

Ann Arbor

C/O SYL

P O Bo* 8364

Ann Arbor, Ml 48107

Atlanta

Bo* 4012
Atlanta. GA 30302

Boston

Bo* 840, Central Station
Cambridge. MA 02139
(617) 492-3928

Chicago

Bo* 6441, Mam PO
Chicago, IL 60680
(312) 427-0003

Cleveland

Box 91954

Cleveland, OH 44101
(216) 621-5138

Detroit

Bo* 32717
Detroit. Ml 48232
(313) 961-1680

Los Angeles

Bo* 29574
Los Feliz Station
Los Angeles, CA 90029
(213) 663-1216

Madison

C/O SYL
Bo* 2074

Madison, Wl 53701

New York

Bo* 444

Canal Street Station
New York, NY 10013
(212) 267-1025

Norfolk

Bo* 1972, Main P O
Norfolk, VA 23501

Oakland

P O Bo* 32552
Oakland, CA 94604
(415) 835-1535

San Francisco

Bo* 5712

San Francisco, CA 94101
(415) 863-6963

Washington, D.C.

P O Bo* 75073
Washington, D C 20013
(202) 636-3537

TROTSKYIST LEAGUE
OF CANADA

Toronto

Box 7198, Station A
Toronto, Ontario M5W 1X8
(416) 593-4138

10

Not Protectionism But Union Organization

Cleveland Steel Referendum

CLEVELAND — For the last couple
months, a collection of trade-union
bureaucrats, ex-mayor Dennis Kucinich
and the Republic Steel Corporation
have been waging a protectionist cam-
paign over a proposed new steel mini-
mill in the industrial Flats area of
Cleveland. Their bid to vote down a
federally funded $7.5 million city
council loan to the non-union Tubular
Steel Corporation was narrowly defeat-
ed in a special referendum February 7.
Citing the fact that the projected bar
mill would use imported steel and get
financing in part from Brazilian capital,
the trade-union tops went into a
chauvinist frenzy, plastering the town
with red. white and blue posters com-
plete with the Stars and Stripes and the
slogan. "Keep America #1. Save
American Jobs." United Steelworkers
of America (USWA) District 31 head
Frank Valenta ranted that the project
“relies heavily on foreign money, for-
eign interests, foreign investments and a
philosophy foreign to American work-
ing people" ( Plain Dealer , 2 January).

Those workers who backed the
bureaucrats’ and bosses' referendum
drive because they thought they were
fighting scab shops were being taken for
a ride. Right next door to the projected
new mill is Republic Steel Corporation,
organized by the USWA. Republic has
an antiquated bar mill that used to
employ 800 workers but has been

indefinitely shut down. If Tubular sets
up. it will have state-of-the-art technolo-
gy. Republic doesn't want the competi-
tion. so they quietly backed the labor
bureaucrats' campaign. According to
the USWA's Valenta, working people
ought to side with the “good bosses"
who provide union jobs. What union
jobs? Last time we looked over half the
union steel workers in this country had
been thrown out of work by Mr.
Valenta's friends in the corporate
boardrooms of U.S. Steel. Republic and
J&L.

Valenta ought to know. The number
of dues-paying USWA members in his
district has been reduced from 47.000 to
26.000 through layoffs and plant clos-
ings. The American steel bosses are the
biggest bunch of job-robbing pirates
around, who have bled the mills for
everything they’re worth and then
invested their profits elsewhere. U.S.
Steel, for example, just shut its Cuyaho-
ga Works in Cleveland along with
several other plants. That was after they
raked in theirshare of $4 billion in union
concessions, supposedly to “save jobs.”
and after they spent $6 billion a couple
of years ago to buy out Marathon Oil.
More mill closings in the Flats are now
expected as the result of the Republic-
LTV merger. Having run the industry
into the ground, the bosses have the gall
to blame it all on foreign steel.

The trade-union bureaucrats who

have parroted this company hype are
now reaping the fruits of their protec-
tionism. I o beat the import restrictions,
foreign capital is now investing in this
country, the largest instance being the
GM -Toyota deal in Fremont. Califor-
nia. The bosses have only one “small”
condition: keep the unions out! Now the
bureaucrats are whining for the “good
old days." In Ohio, they've been joined
by the Communist Party (CP), whose
spokesman Rick Nagin appeared on the
local ABC affiliate to throw his weight
behind the bureaucracy's crusade. The
accounts in the CP's Daily World,
which tries to palm itself off as an

PROTECTIONIST POISON:
Posters distributed by union bu-
reaucrats whip up hatred against
foreign workers.

advocate of workers’ solidarity, simply
neglect to mention any of the llag-
waving. anti-loreign propaganda that
the bureaucrats are peddling all over
Cleveland. A letter from “a steelworker"
printed in the Dad i World (2 February)
moans. “Although there is no law that
says the the steelworkers’ union can't go
in and organize in the new mills, these
companies will spend millions of dollars
to keep the union out." There you have
it. brothers and sisters: since the bosses
don't like unions, there’s no sense in
fighting!

Naturally, we don’t advocate handing
out taxpayers’ money to the Tubular
Steel bosses or any capitalist outfit,
whether American or foreign. Since
when arc there any “good bosses"? We
stand for class struggle against both the
scab outfits like Tubular, who want to
keep the unions out. and against the
bosses at Republic. U.S. Steel and J&L.
who want to gut the union. Should
Tubular follow through and set up
operations in Cleveland, it should be
met with a full-scale organizing drive.
Use the weapons of labor solidarity —
mass picket lines, hot-cargoing — to
make sure that no steel leaves the Flats
unless it’s union steel. This should be
linked to a fight against layoffs and pay
cuts at the organized plants through sit-
down strikes and other class-struggle
weapons. The fact of the matter is the
steel plants are shut down because of an
international capitalist economic crisis.
We need a workers government that
would expropriate all the robber baron
steel bosses and establish a planned
economy in the interests of working
people1 ■

LA. Demo...

(continued from page 12)

Metromedia’s Channel 1 1 . The 7 Febru-
ary Los Angeles Times wrote:

“The release of Armstrong, who served
only 8 months in jail, has drawn fire
from a group of black organizations,
some of which have asked for an
investigation of his treatment by the
criminal justice system. Earlier on
Monday, members of the radical
Spartacist group picketed against the
release, calling it a racist insult."

Demonstration organizers reported
increased police surveillance and har-
assment, including the cops’ demand
that the SL stop using a bullhorn.

A Spartacus Youth League spokes-
man at the demonstration denounced
the string of racist killings by the L.A.
storm troopers and pointed out the
connection between anti-black terror
and the bipartisan anti-Soviet war drive.
She noted the absence of the reformist
left at the demonstration:

“The reason why they’re not here today
is because demonstrating in L.A. means
going against Uncle Tom Bradley and
the Democratic Party — their partners
in the popular front. These groups call
for civilian review boards of cops. Does
anyone really think that the LAPD
would listen to a civilian review board in
Watts or any other community?”

Reformists like the Communist Party
(CP) and the N AACP liberals share the
illusion that review boards and “com-
munity control" schemes can actually
“curb” these killers in blue. Last March
when racist Orange County cop Sperl
kicked in the door and gunned down a
five-year-old black child, Patrick Ma-
son. the CP's grotesque response was to
call for “state legislation for community
control of police" (People's World, 19
March 1983). This, in Los Angeles, the
capital of cop terror, where critics of
police brutality themselves automatical-
ly become police targets, not only in the
movie Blue Thunder but also in reality
as in thecasesof Compton black activist
Mattie Billinger and Michael Zinzun in
Pasadena.

Today the LAPD has virtually
declared martial law for the Summer
Olympics as they squabble with the FBI,
claiming they have the only really
“tested” paramilitary outfit in the
country! While ACLU liberals seek an
out-of-court settlement in their suit
against the former Intelligence Division,
the “red squad” puts on a ski mask to
reappear as the “Anti-Terrorist Divi-
sion.” The shoot-first-ask-questions-
later LAPD. which treats black ghettos
like Watts and the vast Latino barrio
from East Los Angeles to Fluntington
Park as free-fire zones, grows out of
L.A.'s history as an “open shop" town.
Marxists know that the cops cannot be
“reformed” or "controlled’’; they are the
bourgeoisie’s hired thugs and strike-
breakers, the pillar of racist capitalist
“law and order.” T o fight the rampaging
police brutality which is a daily occur-
rence here means mobilizing the power
of labor at the head of the black and
Latin masses. It will take a third
American revolution, a workers revolu-
tion. to finally do away with these
uniformed hit-men.

The fake-leftists who call for
reforming the killer cops virtually
ignored the racist torments perpetrated
against Delois Young and made at most
token protest against the hideous
murder of Patrick Mason. The Sparta-
cist League has taken the lead in
championing the struggle of all the
oppressed, organizing protests against
Patrick Mason’s racist murder and
against the obscene $35,000 bounty
payment to his killer. Last July the SL
demonstrated to defend Delois Young’s
family against the racist cop vendetta In
March 198 1 the Los Angeles SL held the
first demonstration in this country
against the wave of deportations of
Salvadorans Peeing the U.S. -backed
terror regime.

The February 6 demonstration was
addressed by Marie Tolbert, mother of
one of the black “Pontiac Brothers."
who had led a 1978 prison revolt against
inhuman conditions at Pontiac State

Penitentiary in Illinois. She called for
unity against "the capitalists and their
hired henchmen, the police department
. . . because when we rebel, we are people
that are not the capitalist class... who
do they get but their little boys in blue to
keep us in place?” Manuel Delgadillo, a
telephone worker militant, stated. “It is
the duty and obligation of every
unionist in this city to come forward and
in a loud and angry voice say: No more
Delois Youngs! No more Patrick
Masons! No more Ron Settles! No more
Eulia Loves! No more Pontiac Broth-
ers! No more cop terror!” SL spokes-
man Don Andrews called for a break
with the Democrats:

"Labor is the key to realizing everything
that I have just mentioned. Because
what wc sec in this country is the
bureaucrats and the black Democrats
and white Democrats arc trying to pit
sections of the working class against
each other, to set them at each other’s
throats. So all these fake-left groups run
up behind Jesse Jackson. He is for this
racist protectionism, the idea that the
Japanese arc the enemy because they

sell bettercars. better Walkman cassette
recorders. Mondale and Jackson and
the Democratic Party and the labor
bureaucracy arc preaching the same
reactionary racist poison targeting
loreign-born workers for the crisis of
American capitalism. And the Sparta-
cist League maintains that the way to
light massive unemployment, layoffs,
the industrial rot which is part and
parcel of the dying capitalist system, is
to expropriate the capitalists, take away
their factories, take it out of the hands
of the bosses.”

The building of a T rotskyist vanguard
party with a heavy black leadership
component isjkey to the fight for labor/
black mobilization against racist terror.
Such a party will lead the working class
and its allies to a victorious socialist
revolution, smashing the capitalist sys-
tem and bringing killer cop Armstrong,
chief Darryl “Choke Hold” Gates and
the rest of the racist killers to justice
before workers tribunals from Har-
lem to Watts. The heinous crimes
against Delois Young must be avenged!
Black liberation through socialist
revolution! ■

Special Blues Benefit

for the Phone Strikers Defense Committee

Stop the racist anti-labor frame-up of Mozee and Palmiero!

Featuring

Big Joe Peewee Percy

Turner Crayton Mayfield

Special Appearance: actor William Marshall performing an excerpt from
his one-man show as the great black abolitionist Frederick Douglass

Sunday, February 19, 3 to 9 p.m.

— Ticket Outlets —

Flash Records

1861 West Adams Blvd Jerry While Enterprises

4308 Vi South Vermont Ave

Aquarian Book Shop

1342 West Marlin Luther King Jr. Blvd

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1818 North Vermont Ave

At the National Association of Letter Carriers. Branch 24. 774 South Valencia

For more information
(213) 663-1216 or 1217

LOS ANGELES

$5 donation
Proceeds to the PSDC

17 FEBRUARY 1984

11

WORKERS VANGUARD

Crime Against Delois Young Must Be Avenged!

I OS ANGELES— “If Delois Young
Had Shot a Cop. When Would She Get
Out? — Would She He Alive?” de-
manded the Spartacist I eague demon-
stration outside I A County Court-
house on Monday. February 6. The
emergency demo was called to protest
the scheduled release of killer cop
Robert Armstrong, the murderer of
Delois Young's unborn child. The SL
demonstration was the only public
protest of the racist atrocity against this
y oung black woman, and it brought out
30 angry and militant protesters, includ-
ing phone, oil and postal unionists
Armstrong was released Monday
night alter serv ing only eight months in
a “minimum security" jail. It was I A.
sherd I \ deputy Armstrong who in April
19X2 staged the phony call to headquar-
ters setting up the laic night raid on
Delois Young's Duarte apartment on
the pretext til a “drug bust.” Armstrong
and his three other deputies then burst
into her home, shooting Delois Young
m the stomach at pointblank range.
Young's lull-term fetus was killed and
she will have a IX slug embedded in her
chest lor life. I he cops have been on a
vendetta against Delois Young, once

dragging her out of her home in
handculls lor “missing" a court date lor
traffic tickets ... because she was in the
hospital at the time recovering from her
bullet wounds! I ast July alter a jury
convicted Armstrong ol only second-
degree murder, the racist judge reduced
even this charge to "involuntary man-
slaughter" with a onc-ycar sentence.
Armstrong and his three accomplices
are all walking the streets today.

I he SI demonstration demanded
“Vengeance for Young’s Unborn
Child!" and “l abor/ Black Mobiliza-
tions to Stop Racist Terror1" Signs at
the protest included “Life in San
Quentin lor Armstrong and Accom-
plices!" "Free Geronimo Pratt!” “Rea-
gan's Anti-Soviet War Drive Fuels
Racist Murders!" and “Hands Off
Soviet Athletes!" Also "Gun Control
Kills Blacks" and “Full Citizenship
Rights lor Foreign-Born Workers!"
Local black radio stations picked up the
demonstration call and the popular
K.ll H played the announcement
throughout the day. Local CBS-TV
affiliate KNX1 covered the demo on
the 6 p.m. and II p.m. news as did
continued on page //

IF DELOIS YOUNG

P-

nuLD GEJ

JOUUOSHC BEALWE

UMOS UNBOftN
t(P lab^ blacK

nowuzftT

TfO?

x -r r r vCT

V

Spartacist League-initiated demonstration outside L.A. County Court-
house. February 6.

L.A. Demo Protests

Release of Killer Cop

CWA

Afl C'O

Phone militants Ray Palmiero and
Lauren Mozee.

AGAINST TMi
BCLL SYSTEM

SHUT

IT DOWN

SHIT
IT TUiHT' 2

Protest Racist Anti-Labor Frame-Up!

All Out for Lauren and Ray!

OAKLAND— All out on Thursday.
March I ' Demonstrate from X a.m to 9
a m at the Hayward Hall of Justice
(24405 Amador in Hayward. Califor-
nia) and attend the preliminary hearing
lor victimized phone strikers Lauren
Mozee and Ray Palmiero set for 9 a.m.
At this hearing the district attorney's
oil ice. local mouthpiece for the Reagan-
ite racists and labor-haters, is supposed
to present evidence to justify the
trumped-up charges against the fired
C WA (Communications Workers of
America) militants. The judge will rule
on whether or not to send the case to
trial and what charges Lauren and Ray
will lace I he Phone Strikers Defense
Committee (PSDC) is pursuing every
avenue ol legal defense while placing no
confidence in the class “justice" ol the
capitalist courts. Militant protest and
public exposure are key to defeating this
vicious Irame-up. I he PSDC is calling

this demonstration at the courthouse to
demand Stop the racist anti-labor
frame-up — Mozee and Palmiero must
not go to jail! Freedom and jobs back
lor 1 auren and Ray!

On picket duty during the nation-
al telephone strike last August 10 in
Klan-infcsted San Leandro. I auren
was assaulted by racist scab manager
Michelle Rose Hansen, w ho called her a
“black nigger bitch” and struck her in
the lace. Lauren defended herself, and
Ray came to her assistance Lordefend-
ing themselves and their union picket
line against racist attack. Mozee and
Palmiero were fired from their jobs,
arrested on felony assault charges and
denied unemployment benefits While
Lauren and Ray lace years in prison,
racist scab Hansen got oil scot-free!

I auren and Ray have been targeted
hy the DA., phone company and I Bl as
members ol the M ilitant Action Caucus.

a militant opposition in the CWA.
because Lauren was a ten-year member
ol the Black Panther Party and because
they arc an interracial couple. The
bosses’ war on labor that claimed the
lives of union pickets Ray Phillips and
GregGoobic isalso behind the Irame-up
ol I auren and Ray . The same system ol
racist injustice that murdered live-year-
old Patrick Mason and Willie Lee
Drumgoole in cold blood is trying to
railroad I auren and Ray.

In mobilizing for the widely endorsed
labor/black demonstration in Oakland
last October 29 we forced the D A to
drop the most serious felony charge
against Lauren and Ray. In every 'court
appearance the courtroom has been
packed with supporters ol I auren and
Ray. Demonstrate on March I to make
it clear that the decent working people
of the Bay Area w ill not stand for South
Alrica-style justice! ■

e! 8 a.m., March 1, Hayward Courthouse

12

17 FEBRUARY 1984

WORKERS VANGUARD „

No. 349 -m£>k9m 2 March 1984

Bosses' Rules— A Losing Game

Labor's Gotta
Play Hardball to Win

Cops attack striking shipbuilders in 1979 at Newport News, Virginia.

UPI

The head of the bus drivers union
bargaining council remarked. “It was a
game of hardball and they played harder
hall than we did.” announcing the
sellout of the Greyhound strike last
December. That’s for sure, and not only
at Greyhound. Reagan set the tone in
1981 by firing 1 5,000 air controllers, the
entire PATCO union. The next year
Iowa Beet Packers used National Guard
bayonets to shove a four-year wage
free/e down the workers’ throats. In
1983 came the Phelps-Dodge copper
strike in Arizona — this time hundreds of
Guardsmen, helicopters, armored per-
sonnel carriers, shootings, evictions, as
the lull power ol the state was mobilized
against the miners. After knocking off
some peripheral sectors, the union-
busters are now aiming at the heart of
organized labor: the key national
industrial and transport unions. At
Greyhound they demanded a 25 percent
pay cut. At the beginning the union tops
soft-soaped the ranks, claiming they
couldn’t lose their jobs because the
walkout was “legal.” But the scab buses
rolled anyway, cops busted pickcters’
heads coast-to-coast, hundreds w'ere
fired, and when the "negotiations" were
over, those who went back had to eat
monstrous concessions. What did the
AFL-CIO bureaucrats do about this?
Nothing— they sat on their hands and
called a few token rallies so angry
unionists could blow off steam.

In Reagan's America it’s open season
on the unions, on blacks, the poor, the
illegal aliens, the radicals — we’re all
targets of the drive to roll things back to
the way they were when the robber
barons rode high in the saddle, when the
only business of America, said Calvin
Coolidge, was business. The biggest
growth industry in the U.S. today isn’t

high tech or armaments — it’s strike-
breaking. The Pinkertons and Wacken-
huts are having a boom providing the
bosses with armored cars, vans and
guards to protect scabs. These are the
scum of the earth. Remember Lt.
Calley? His first public act was strike-

breaking on a railroad in Florida. From
there to butchering Vietnamese women
and children at My l.ai was a natural
progression. And if the death-squad
killers get kicked out of El Salvador by
the leftist guerrillas, pretty soon they’ll
be here as “freedom fighters” working
for these scabherding outfits.

Unions aren’t the only ones under the
gun today — by no means. "Dividends
are rising — black people are starving,”
we wrote recently. Every day there is
new evidence. “Report Says U.S.
Hunger Is Widespread and Rising.”
headlined the New York Times on
February 7- I wo weeks later the Census
Bureau officially reported 34 million
people living below the poverty line in
1982. an increase of almost 50 percent in
the last three years. As the economy
climbs up from the depth of the worst
crisis since the Great Depression of the
1930s some white workers are finding
work again, but black unemployment is
still officially above 15 percent. In fact.
almost half of all black men do not have
a full-time job! U.S, capitalism main-
tains a huge army of black and “illegal"
Latin workers to provide low-wage
labor; now they are using this club to

beat the unions. During the Greyhound
strike the company’s appeal for scabs
was directed explicitly at minorities and
women. All across America, thousands
of unemployed lined up to act as
strikebreakers. And worst of all, they
continued on page U

The

“External Tendency”

From

Cream Puffs
to Food
Poisoning

See Page 8

WV Photo

Striking coal miners in Stearns, Kentucky.

Letters

Letter from Lanka

20.01.84

The slogan that SL/L and WV so far
used against the use of armed force by
the Lankan government to suppress the
Tamil people in the North and East of
Lanka was “Withdraw all forces!”

In the fusion of the Bolshevik Group
and the iSt [international Spartacist
tendency] the following was included:
“We demand the immediate withdrawal
of the Sri Lankan government police
and armed forces." WV 282-283 pub-
lished slogans with the same meaning:

“Free the victims of anti-Tamil slate
terror! Cops and troops out of Jaffna!"
( WV 282. page 03)

“Slogans raised at the New York
demonstration called for the freeing of
victims of the anti-Tamil terror, for the
withdrawal of cops and troops from the

Tamil areas, and for the right of sell-
determination for the Tamil people of
Sri Lanka.” ( WV 283. page 02)

However, instead of this, fTTfNo. 336,
12 August 1983] published “Immediate
withdrawal of Sinhala army units from
all Tamil areas.” This is a slogan that the
NSSP [New Sama Samaja Party] used
at one time. The TULF [Tamil United
Liberation Front] at that time de-
manded that the forces deployed in the
North should have a majority of Tamil-
speaking personnel. NSSP’s call for the
withdrawal of Sinhala forces was in
conjunction with the TULF call. In
Lanka Spartacist Nos. 1-2 we criticized
the NSSP slogan:

“Falling in line with the demands of the
TULF, the slogan of ‘withdraw Sinhala
forces' of the NSSP. . (i.c. the NSSP
accepts that there exist a Tamil-

Tanks of Lankan army of occupation patrol street In northern Tamil city of
Jaffna, 1981.

The Pathology of Renegacy

With the Hitler- Stalin pact and the
approach of World War II, the pressure
and prejudices of "democratic" imperial-
ism generated among petty-bourgeois
elements mass desertions from Marxism.

In April 1940 the Burnham- Shachtman-
Abern opposition split from the Socialist
Workers Party rejecting defense of the
Soviet Union. SWP leader James P.

Cannon. America's founding Trotskyist LENIN

leader, wrote of these deserters.

They are all isolated individuals, yet each one of them considers his
disillusionment with the proletarian revolution an important public event and
continually makes all kinds of elaborate explanations of how it came to pass. On the
eve of the real beginning of capitalism’s second world war, which will crush out the
lives of millions and tens of millions of human beings, they write about themselves,
their disappointments and reactions, as though these were the most interesting and
important subjects in the world. Well aware of their own shabbiness, they feel the
need of self-justification and public approval. They are uneasy of conscience and
seek to stifle it by shouting imprecations at those who have remained faithful to the
banner they have deserted. They give every explanation of their motivation but the
real one — the fact that they have no confidence in the socialist future of humanity
and no stomach for the struggle to achieve it.

— James P. Cannon, “The Pathology of Renegacy,"

Fourth International (June 1940)

TROTSKY

WORKERS VANGUARD

Marxist Working-Class Biweekly of the Spartacist League of the U.S.

EDITOR Jan Norden

PRODUCTION MANAGER Noah Wilner

CIRCULATION MANAGER: Darlene Kamiura

EDITORIAL BOARD Jon Brule. Charles Burroughs. George Foster. Liz Gordon. James Robertson,
Reuben Samuels, Joseph Seymour, Marjorie Stamberg (Closing editor (or No 349: Liz Gordon)

Workers Vanguard (USPS 098-770) published biweekly, skipping an Issue in August and a week In December, by
tho Spanecist Publishing Co , 41 Warren Street, New York, NY 100Q7 Telephone 732-7862 (Editorial), 732-7861
(Business) Address ell correspondence to Box 1377, GPO, New York. NY 10116 Domestic subscriptions 55 00/24
issues Second-class postage paid at New York. NY POSTMASTER Send address changes to Workers Vanguard,
Box 1377, GPO, New York. NY 10116

Opinions impressed in slgnod articles or tellers do nol necessarily express Ihe editorial viewpoint

No. 349 2 March 1984

speaking bourgeois army)." (Ijanka
Spartacist Nos. 1-2. page 15)

“Immediate withdrawal of Sinhala
army units from all Tamil areas” will
create the wrong impression that it is
agreed for a Tamil-speaking army to
stay on. Though it is correct that the
army sent to the North by the Lankan
government is almost all Sinhala, the
slogan “Withdraw all forces” would
have been a more correctly formed
slogan than the slogan in ff'TNo. 336,
and would not have created wrong
impressions.

Not to demand “withdrawal of
Sinhala army units from all Tamil
areas!" is not capitulating to Sinhala
racists. Such a demand equals the
demand of Tamil nationalists and also

forms a wrong impression. The slogan
“Withdraw all forces from North and
Fast" could be presented not allowing
the working class to have wrong
impressions about the bourgeois army.

Spartacist League/Lanka

WV replies: We thank the comrades
for bringing to our attention the fact
that the call for “withdrawal of Sinhala
army units” from Tamil areas could,
given the history of this slogan in Sri
Lanka, be interpreted as advocating the
replacement of Sinhalese with Tamil-
speaking troops. Clearly, then, the
earlier slogan “withdrawal of cops and
troops from Tamil areas” is the correct
one. ■

DSA Protests Too Much

Somerville. Mass.

To the Editor:

You should get your facts straight
before you distort them Contrary to the
assertions in your article on the Boston
elections ( WV, Nov. 4). at no time did
Boston DSA endorse Ray Flynn lor
mayor — nor was an endorsement ever
proposed. During the preliminary DSA
was indeed divided, as was the larger
progressive coalition of which we are a
part. Some of us wanted a statement
supporting both Flynn and King as by
far the two best candidates (out of nine),
though reflecting different constitu-
encies— others sought an outright en-
dorsement of King. No official position
was taken. In the final DSA did endorse
Mel King by an overwhelming margin.

Mike Pattberg

WV replies: As we wrote in our article,
“Populism and Racism in Boston
Elections" (WV No. 341, 4 November
1983), the choice between black liberal
Mel King and the racist “born-again-
populist” Ray Flynn posed a dilemma
for the city’s assorted liberals, fake-
leftists and “progressives.” No less so for
the Democratic Socialists of America
(DSA). As DSA head Michael Harring-
ton declared during the 1976 presiden-
tial race, if the Democrats nominated
Mickey Mouse for president, he would
vote for him.

The Boston elections, though, were
"nonpartisan.” So what’s a good social
democrat to do when two “liberals” are
pitted against each other? While Mike
Pattberg is correct in saying that his
organization did not “endorse" Flynn
in the preliminary, in Boston DSA
honchos actively threw their support
behind him. Thus DSA National Ex-
ecutive Committee member Peter Drei-

ETs: No Home?

[West Virginia]

This is to inform you of an address

change Congratulations on the

circulation figures on you vs. Militant
[see “ Workers Vanguard KO’s Mili-
tant," WV No. 342, 18 November 1983].
Here’s another straw in the wind Even
the political philistines of the SLP’s
People recognize you as the "principal
Trotskyist organization in the U.S.
today." But watch out. The would-be-
big-frogs-small-ponds ET-types [the
self-styled “External Tendency" — see
article on SL National Conference,
“Black and Red in Reagan’s America.”
WV No. 342] won’t go away now
because with the SWP going under,
there won’t be anywhere to go They’ll
provide a chorus for backward elements
inside the SL.

Good Luck!
SJ.

er asserted that “...our first choice for
change is Flynn" (In These Times. 5-1 1
October 1983).

We’ve seen nothing in print to
document Pattberg’s contention that
the DSA endorsed King in the final
election. We’ll take your word lor it. but
we have to observe that the DSA’s
"endorsement” evidently didn't mean
anything. The DSA is an organization
with even less discipline than the
Democratic Party: its members support
whomever they feel like. Did Peter
Drcier. for instance, shift his allegiance
from Flynn after DSA allegedly en-
dorsed King? We have to doubt it. since
Flynn appointed Dreier as one of the
people to head up his Housing Task
Force.

The DSA is very "democratic" about
its honchos saying whatever they want
in pursuit of perceived personal inter-
ests. But there are limits. If any DSAers
were to have denounced both capitalist
candidates in Boston and come out for
building a workers party against the
Democrats and Republicans, we have
no doubt they’d get about the same
treatment as Harrington (then of the
Socialist Party) gave the fledgling SDS
in 1962. In the famous “Port Huron
Statement," the young SDS New
Leftists had come out against the anti-
communism which is Harrington’s
stock in trade. So he locked them out of
their office. ■

“Herr Doktor”

Editors, WV

Edmonton. Alberta
31-1-84

It’s best not to use the German
language as itself an emblem of fascism
in your otherwise justified polemics, e.g.
re "Herr Doktor" Graham p. 13 of 20-1-
84 WV^o. 346]. It recalls the New Left
‘Amerika’ and has, per se, no political
content — hence feeds into the intellectu-
al laziness that looks at relatively
obvious traits like race or nationality to
the detriment of more important class
dynamics. A small point, but I know
you like to be precise in your
characterizations.

Fraternally.

D. Justice

WV replies: Yes.

SL/SYL Class Series

Basic Marxism

Every Wednesday, 7:00 p.m.
February 22-April 18

1634 Telegraph Ave (3rd floor)
Fot more Information (415) 835-1535

OAKLAND

2

WORKERS VANGUARD

Freedom and Jobs Back for Lauren and Ray!

L. A. Blues Benefit Brings Down the House

I OS ANGELES, February 19 — They
were dancing in the aisles and clapping
and stomping in time this evening as an
enthusiastic crowd of over 250 people
jammed the National Association of
Letter Carriers (NALC) Branch 24 hall
to hear the finest blues benefit this side
of Chicago. Featuring blues greats Big
Joe Turner. Peewee Crayton and Percy
Mayfield, the benefit organized by the
Phone Strikers Defense Committee
(PSDC) was a smashing success, raising
$3,105 for victimized Bay Area phone
strikers Lauren Mozec and Ray Pal-
micro. Ray and Lauren, a former
member of the Black Panther Party,
were fired from their jobs and face four
years in prison for defending themselves
and their union against a racist assault
while on picket duty during last sum-
mer’s national phone strike. The benefit
also launched the Los Angeles Labor
Black l eague for Social Defense (see
below) Symbolically, behind the podi-
um was a portrait of Patrick Mason, the
five-year-old black child murdered in
his own bedroom by a racist Orange
County cop; Hanking the stage were
large photos of martyred strikers Greg
Goobic of the Oil Workers and Grey-
hound driver Ray Phillips, both killed
by scabs running through picket lines in
the last two months.

The struggle to beat back the racist
anti-labor framc-up of Mozee and
Palmiero has generated wide support in
the Los Angeles labor movement. The
defense effort has been endorsed by a
number of labor union locals and black
organizations, as well as dozens of
individual union officials and promi-
nent black leaders in the area, including
Los Angeles city councilman Robert
Farrell who wrote a fundraising letter.
Striking Greyhound workers in Decem-
ber passed the bucket, raising $459.
while hard-pressed Continental strikers

William Marshall

WV Photos

Peewee
Crayton
(above left)
and Percy
Mayfield

OVERBY HALL

STOP THE RACIST ANTI * LABOR
FRAME-UP! w
LAUREN MOZEE 5. RAY PALMIERO
MUST NOT CO TO JAIL !

v ^

PHONE STRIKERS DEFENSE COMMITTEE

Big Joe Turner
(above)

pitched in $73. In January. Los Angeles
Communications Workers (CWA) Lo-
cal 11502 donated $200 directly to
Lauren and Ray; the cement workers
union collected $162 from delegates at
their regional conference, then matched
this from their general fund

Four hundred fifty tickets to the
benefit were sold in advance, 200 alone
to CWA members who walked picket
lines in L.A. last summer. The Los
Angeles local of the NALC not only
endorsed but donated the use of their
hall, complete with lounge and union
bartenders, purchased 20 buttons and
took a block of tickets to sell to their
members, gave the PSDC a contribu-
tion of $100 and even part of the
proceeds from the bar. Several union
locals and officials bought blocks of
tickets including NALC Branch 2200 in
Pasadena, International Association of
Machinists Local 597 (representing the
Continental Airlines strikers) and
AFSCME Local 3234 at UCLA. An-
nouncements of the benefit for the
Phone Strikers Defense Committee
appeared on the front page of the Los
Angeles Times "Calendar” section and
in the Long Beach Press Telegram ; in
addition there was a 40-minute live
interview with Don Andrews of the
Spartacist League and Steve Bull, a
member of CWA Local 11502, on
Pacifica radio K PFK’s “Public Affairs”

program and a feature spot on the major
black radio station, Stevie Wonder’s
KJLH.

The crowd was more than two-thirds
black with strong representation from
local unions. IATSE technicians pro-
vided the sound, and the guest book
shows unionists from OCAW. Team-
sters. Laborers, ORTT, ITU, APWU.
AFSCME and SE1U. Lauren and Ray
were there, coming dow n specially from
the Bay Area accompanied by two
carloads of friends and supporters.
Matty Billinger. a National Alliance
Against Racist and Political Repression
(NAARPR) memberand black commu-
nity activist who faces racist frame-up
charges in Compton was introduced to
the audience. A black woman who
drove with friends all the way from
Fontana (where a black phone worker
was paralyzed for life when he was shot
off a telephone pole by a K K K sniper a
few years back) told WV\ "I'm really
impressed to see such an integrated
crowd fighting together for a very
important case.”

And the music was hot! The benefit
brought together performers from all
over L.A. It was an electric combina-
(lon: musicians came down from the
stage and played while mingling with the
crowd on the dance Poor. The audience
was brought to its feet when the great
Percy Mayfield joined premier L.A.

blues guitarist Peewee Crayton for a
joint set. When blues great Big Joe
Turner wound up the show, he brought
down the house. Big Joe. famous
throughout the U S. and well-loved
among blacks in South Africa, had
people dancing from the stage in front to
the literature tables in the back. A real
bond developed between the audience
and the performers who gave generously
of their time and talent, joining together
in the fight for freedom and jobs for
Lauren Mozee and Ray Palmiero.

Earlier in the program the audience
was treated to a special appearance by
Emmy award-winning black actor
William Marshall. CWA member and
emcee Manuel Delgadillo introduced
Marshall as “a fighter for human rights
and the oppressed who’s here today
performing as the great black aboli-
tionist Frederick Douglass on behalf of
two courageous unionists.” Marshall
sketched Douglass’ early career after
escaping from slavery and pointed to the
important debates in the 1850s over
what strategy would end slavery. He
shared with the audience a paraphrase
of Douglass' response: "Some believed
in the ballot, some believed in the bullet.
The Garrisonian abolitionists headed by
William Lloyd Garrison believed in
wielding the ‘sword of the spirit.'
Increasingly as the crisis neared that
continued on page 4

Labor Black League Launched in L.A.

The highly successful L.A. blues
benefit held on February IV to defend
victimized phone strikers Lauren Mozee
and Ray Palmiero was also the spring-
board to launch the Labor Black League
for Social Defense in Los Angeles. Don
Smith, a black exec utive board member
of the National Association of letter
Carriers Branch 2200 in Pasadena .
made a moving appeal to the audience
to get involved in the LBl. :

"I'm not a speaker hut I would like to
sa i a few things. I remember in the early
40s when mv parents had a restaurant,
that the police in pretense of looking for
somebody else broke in there and heat
nn lather, knocked all his teeth out. and
all i hey could say was dun n was a
mistaken idem in He never got any-
thing out of d. Never got a recognition
or apology. So what I'm really up here
about is to hope that you would join

with me in the Labor Black League for
Social Defense "

Brother Smith introduced the audience
to Richard Fraser "who has made an
important contribution to the black
struggle." Comrade Fraser, a veteran
Trotskyist, is the author of "For the
Materialist Conception of the Negro
Question." That evening ten people,
including a number who worked with
the Phone Strikers Defense Committee
to build the benefit, joined the Labor
Black League. We reprint below the
Labor Black League statement.

Join the Labor Black League
for Social Defense!

It's time that we come together in
defense of our interests and survival by

forming a Labor Black League for
Social Defense in Los Angeles. For far
too long. Los Angeles has been an open-
shop. low wage, anti-union, racist city.
The bosses have taken advantage of
that, and their hired assassins in blue are
killing us off like Hies. Remember
Patrick Mason? Founding members of
the 1 HI demonstrated in downtown
I A. to show our outrage at the murder
of this 5 year old black child, gunned
down by Anthony Sperl, who was
rewarded with an obscene $35,000
bounty and a lifetime “pension.” Like-
wise we came out into the streets iny,
opposition to the cop vendetta against
Dclois Young and her family to protest
the release of Robert Armstrong,
murderer of her unborn child. We are
also demanding freedom and jobs back

for fired phone workers Lauren Mozee
and Ray Palmiero. w ho are facing time
in state prison lor delending themselves
against a racist, company assault on
their picket line.

The Labor Black League lor Social
Defense stands for mobilizing the
masses of working people and op-
pressed for militant integrated struggle
against the brutal system of racist
oppression that is capitalist America,
where the bi-partisan anti-Soviet war
dri\e abroad means a fierce increase in
cop/ Rian terror and union busting at
home. Initiated by and fraternally allied
to the Spartacist League, a multiracial
revolutionary Marxist organization, the
Labor Black League for Social Defense
is part of the revolutionary movement of
the workers and oppressed against the
bosses and lor socialism.

When the Klan planned to march in
Washington. D.C. on Nov. 27. ’82 the
continued on page 4

2 MARCH 1984

3

Reagan's 1984 “Human Rights" Report

We are as sick and tired of “1984”
Orwell stories as the next guy. But the
Reagan government keeps them com-
ing. The State Department recently
announced that the word “killing" in
their “human rights” reports would be
flushed down the memory hole. From
now on, U.S. -backed butchers all over
the world will no longer “kill” their
political opponents. What will it be
called now7 According to the well-
polished assistant secretary for human
rights, Elliott Abrams, as reported in the
early edition of the New York Times ( 1 1
February), before they pulled the story:
“We lound the term ‘killing’ too broad
and have substituted the more precise, if
more verbose, ‘unlawful or arbitrary
deprivation of life’.”

Along with this “semantic” change in
the government’s human rights score-
cards. the State Department announced
that henceforth the word “torture”
would be “combined” in the category of
“degrading treatment.” And while they
were at it. the “human rights” gang
excised the phrase “invasion of the
home” in favor of “arbitrary interfer-
ence of privacy.” “Torture.” say the legal
beagles at Foggy Bottom, is too “con-
fusing/’ “Killing” is “too broad.” “Inva-
sion of the home” is “too literally
interpreted.” What’s going on here is all
too obvious.

From its inception under Democrat
Carter, the imperialist “human rights”
crusade has been a propaganda ploy in
the anti-Soviet war drive. The U.S.
screams bloody murder over the fate of

Anatoly Shcharansky or Solzhenitsyn,
who want to return tocapitalism oreven
bring back the tsar. The problem for
Washington is that it supports gcnocidal
regimes which pile up dead bodies of the
“disappeared” along the highways by
the hundreds and thousands. It makes
the Soviet “evil empire" look pretty
damn good. So sure enough, using the
newdefinitionsthe U.S. hails “a scries of
victories for democracy in Central and
South America," while denouncing “a
continuing deterioration in all ways" in
the USSR!

It is no wonder the State Department
has adopted a new set of accounting
practices for “human rights" violations.
When one of its favorite butchers pulls
off a night-and-fog operation, breaking
into the homes of suspected opposition-
ists and carting them off without trial,
Elliott Abrams can list this as "an
invasion of privacy." Or when
American-trained sadists use their
electric cattle prods and rubber hoses to
torture their victims, it can be equated
with “degrading treatment.” in the
USSR. And if the murder is done
directly by junta armies in “anti-
subversive operations,” it doesn't count
because it’s “legal."

This anti-Soviet “human rights"
Newspcak is nothing new. Jeane Kirk-
patrick. the sinister Madame Nhu of the
Reagan administration, got her job as
UN ambassador by apologizing for
“authoritarian" governments (which
only torture and kill off their popula-
tion) in contrast to Soviet-style "totali-

tarian" regimes where "freedom" has
been abolished. This, of course, refers to
“free enterprise" — the right to break
unions, lay off hundreds of thousands,
starve millions. Similarly, over in
Maggie Thatcher’s Britain the Tory
press a few years ago figured out a way
to avoid mentioning the embarrassing
fact of elderly and poor people freezing
to death because they didn’t have a
shilling to turn on the heat — they
invented "hypothermia."

Another useful distinction in the
government’s lexicon is that between
"economic" and “political” refugees.
According to the immigration cops
every right-wing "freedom fighter.” like
Vietnam’s gold-hoarding. Hitler-loving
mass-murdering ex-president. Marshal
Ky. or the anti-Castro gusano terrorists,
is welcomed as a political refugee. Those
fleeing the death squads of El Salvador
or Guatemala for “El Norte.” however,
are economic refugees to be hunted
down and sent back The day after
killing the story about the State Depart-
ment killing the word “killing." the
Times reported that the U.S. was
offering citizenship opportunities to
more than 100,000 Cubans. No such
luck for the thousands of Haitians who
escaped from “Baby Doc’s” hellhole —
for these black "economic refugees.”
there are only concentration camps and
deportation.

For several years now. the U.S. has
rounded up and sent back thousands of
Salvadoran refugees. The reign of death
in this “free world” “democracy" is so

Victims of death squads in El
Salvador.

chilling that scores, perhaps hundreds,
of American churches are now con-
sciously breaking the law to offer
asylum to the hundreds of thousands
seeking refuge from D’Aubuisson and
his pathological killers. The U.S. claims
the refugees have no “well-founded
fear.” But now a preliminary report of
findings by the ACLU and religious
groups lists the names of 50 deportees
who were killed upon return; the
number of nameless victims is far
higher. Perhaps, as liberal commentator
Bill Moyers remarked on CBS-TV, the
State Department will respond by
renaming the death squads the “Pro-
Deprivation Defense League.” But dead
is dead. ■

L.A. Benefit...

( continued from page 3)

sounded to me like nonsense. If speech
alone could have abolished slavery this
work would have been done long ago.
What we need, as I said in my paper, the
North Star . is an anti-slavery govern-
ment. For that the ballot is needed. And
if the slaveholders refuse to heed the
ballot, then it will come to bullets.”
Marshall talked about the famous
meeting between Douglass and the
revolutionary anti-slavery insurrection-
ist John Brown, and how difficult it was
for Douglass to turn down the invitation
to go with Brown to Harpers Ferry. He
had his own mission to carry out and his
decision not to accompany Brown on
the raid on the federal arsenal in
Virginia was certainly not out of any
illusion in reforms. Marshall quoted
Douglass addressing a group of friends
gathered to celebrate the anniversary of
slave emancipation in the West Indies:
“The whole history of the progress of
human liberty shows that all conces-
sions yet made to her august claims,

have been born of earnest struggle

Power concedes nothing without a
demand. It never did and it never will.
Find out just what any people will
quietly submit to and you have found
out the exact measure of injustice and
wrong which will be imposed upon
them, and these will continue till they
are resisted with either words or blows,
or with both. The limits of tyrants arc
prescribed by the endurance of those
whom they oppress. In the light of these
ideas. Negroes will be hunted at the
North, and held and flogged at the
South so long as they submit to those
devilish outrages, and make no resis-
tance. cither moral or physical."

William Marshall’s riveting perform-
ance received a standing ovation.

Lauren and Ray spoke briefly and got
a rousing reception from the crowd.
Thanking everybody present for coming
out and the Letter Carriers for their
hospitality and backing. Lauren ex-
tended a special thanks to the Sparlacist
League/Spartacus Youth League, the
Partisan Defense Committee, the Phone
Strikers Defense Committee, the Labor
Black League and the Militant Action
Caucus in the CWA for their hard work
and unfailing support. Addressing the

growing labor support in Los Angeles
for the case Lauren said. “You guys here
are the core of the militant unionists,
like those in the Bay Area who have
supported us and given us courage to
fight for victory. And 1 know you will be
with us in spirit on March 1st when we
go into court again." Ray added. “Here
in L.A. I know the phone workers
experienced the arrest of an entire picket
line during that strike and 1 want to
applaud the determination of those
picketers. We know that many of those
people who were arrested and thrown
into jail are in the forefront of our
defense efforts down here in L.A.”

While the bands were setting up for
Big Joe, Don Andrews of the Spartacist
League briefly addressed the crowd:
“You all here have heard tonight a lot of
mention about the Labor/Black Mobili-
zation that stopped the Klan in Wash-
ington, D.C. in November 1982. That
was us, and you all have to join in that.
Because we’re an integrated group of
black, white and Latin socialists. And
we hail the establishment of the Labor
Black League for Social Defense in Los
Angeles, which is your organization. It’s
your organization that you have to
make into a fighting organization so we
can get our equality and justice. But it’s
going to come through the fight for a
workers revolution.”*

Labor Black
League...

(continued from page 3)

Spartacist League initiated the Labor/
Black Mobilization to Stop the KKK
which led 5.000 blacks and trade
unionists to stop them — and did! This
was a victory that showed the power of
blacks and labor — the kind of victory
we need more of.

In solidarity with the Spartacist
League, the LBL will initiate and join in
future actions that struggle for full
citizenship rights for foreign-born
workers, in protests against the deporta-
tion of Salvadorans, and in marches to
stop the racist roundups of foreign-born
workers — in Los Angeles aimed espe-

cially against Mexicans and other
Spanish-speaking workers. The LBL
fights the bi-partisan anti-Soviet war
drive by supporting the revolutionary
struggles of working people and the
oppressed abroad against U.S. imperial-
ism. At the moment, our heroic class
brothers and sisters in El Salvador have
a chance to go for victory against the
U.S. backed butchers. We are for the
military victory of Salvadoran rebels.
Against the reactionary contra invasion
of Nicaragua, we say: Kill the Invaders!
Complete and Extend the Revolution!
And we support the fight in the unions
for boycotting military goods to the
Central American reactionary regimes
and their allies. We call for labor strikes
against U.S. intervention in Central
America! The LBL fights for interna-
tional working class solidarity, and for
the defeat of the murderous U.S. rulers
at home and abroad!

IF YOU STAND FOR—

1. Labor/black mobilizations to stop
racist terror!

2. No to gun control!

3. Down with the death penalty!

4. Down with the chauvinist poison of
protectionism!

5. Full union and citizenship rights
for foreign-born workers! Stop deporta-
tions! Down with La Migra!

6. Jobs for All! For a shorter work
week with no loss in pay! Fora massive

program of public works under union
control!

7. A fighting labor movement —
Picket lines mean don’t cross! Sit-down
strikes against mass layoffs! Stop union
busting! Organize the unorganized!

8. Fight for women’s rights! Freeabor-
tion on demand, free quality 24-hour
childcare! Equal pay for equal work!

9. Down with anti-gay laws! Full
democratic rights for homosexuals!

10. For busing against segregated
schools — Extend it to the suburbs! Free,
quality higher education for all — Open
admissions and free tuition with
stipend!

1 1. Institute a massive social security
program — health, pensions, full unem-
ployment compensation at union
wages!

12. Smash the anti-Soviet war drive!
Support revolutionary struggles of
working people abroad!

13. Break labor and blacks from the
Democrats and Republicans! Finish the
Civil War! For an integrated class-
struggle workers party to fight for a
workers government! Take industry
away from its incompetent and corrupt
owners! Rebuild America on a socialist
planned economy!

—THEN JOIN THE LABOR BLACK
LEAGUE FOR SOCIAL DEFENSE!

Los Angeles
19 February 1984

Spartacist League Forums

Black History
and the Class Struggle

Speaker: Don Andrews,

Founding member
of Labor/Black
League in Detroit,

SL Central Committee
Sunday, March 4, 4:00 p.m.

Lewis Charles Recreation Center

4863 W Adams Boulevard

For more information: (213) 663-1216

LOS ANGELES

Speaker Bernard Vance,

SL Central Committee
Saturday, March 17, 7:30 p.m.
Hyde Park Hilton
Cambridge Room
4900 South Lake Shore Drive

For more information (312) 427-0003

CHICAGO

4

WORKERS VANGUARD

Congratulations on Victory
Against Moonies’ Deadly Libel

With the statement, "We no longer
charge that the Spartacist League-
Spar tarns Youth League provoked the
violence on that day," the Washington
Times, a newspaper operated by the
sinister, anti-communist cult of Sun
Myung Moon, was forced to eat its
vicious libel against the SL/SYL and
the Labor / Black Mobilization which
stopped the Ku Klux Klan on 27
November 1982 in Washington, D.C.
(see "Moonies Forced to Retract Dead-
ly Libel," WV No. 345, 6 January).

We print below a number of the
messages of congratulations received by
the SL/SYL in the weeks since this
victory — a victory for all the partici-
pants of the powerful mass mobilization
of 5,000 which put a stop to the KKK’s
plans to parade its racist terror in the
nation's capital.

Proud and Pleased

As a person who is greatly opposed to
the Ku Klux Klan and their beliefs I was
proud to be among the Spartacist
members in their demonstration against
the Klan. For this reason I am more
than pleased that the libel suit has been
dropped.

Georgia Roberts

Former Executive Sccrctarv.

NAACP Norfolk Branch

Victory for All Intended
Victims of KKK

The victory of the Spartacist League
in its suit against the Moonies is a
victory for all working class people,
minorities and all the other intended
victims of the KKK and Nazis in this
country. The dangerous lie made by the
Moonies to set up the SL for govern-
ment repression on the scale suffered by
the Black Panther Party in the late 60's
has failed this time.

Ed Kartsen

Chairman. November 27
Labor/Black Mobilization
to Stop the KKK; opposition
candidate for president.
Transport Workers Union
Local 100. New York City

We Defeated the Power
of a Poison Pen

Too many times organizations, par-
ties and trade unions have been torn
apart and sometimes destroyed by an
untrue statement broadcast or printed
and distributed to the public. I was
down November the 27th. 19X2 with all
the trade-union sisters and brothers and
not one of them was guilty of the charges
made by the Moonies’ reporter.

This is a very great victory for the
Spartacist League, second only to the
results of the event on November the
27th '82 when the Klan did not parade
down the streets of Washington. D C.

There were a whole lot ol people, like
reactionaries and Klan sympathizers.
pro-Klan people, mad in Washington
and around the country about what
happened on November 27th. The
Moonies tried to get back at the
Spartacist l.eague and the union sisters
and brothers with the power of a poison
pen. The Moonies did not write one
thing against the Klan coming to good
old Washington. D C. and trying to
spread false propaganda. But they did
attack an anti-Klan group. Figure this
out for yourself.

So l am proud I was at the November
27 anti-Klan demonstration, and I’m
proud of the victory over the Moonies.

Black trade unionist,
steward in the IBEW.
Tidewater area

The Spartacist League Went
After Justice and Won

If we lived under Sun Myung Moon's
theocracy. I can assure you that you
readers and the rest of the world would
never have the successful libel suit

particularly concerning the Soviet
Union and the characterization of the
Moonies at this point as "fascist. " But
no one knows better than he just how
sinister the Moon cult is, and we greatly
appreciate his aid and assistance in this
hard-won victory.

A Victory for Truth
Over Lies

One thing I’ve not yet had an
opportunity to fill in, is that according
to the dogma, the religio-politico-social
dogma of Sun Myung Moon, the
ultimate manifestation on earth of

is the statement, in a judicial context,
that once again the Unification Church
got busted for lying and hurling
somebody.

The thing to me that has the signifi-
cance, and the beauty and the strength,
the grandeur and the power, is that
victims are only voluntary. And that if
you’re made a victim and you don’t want
to be one, you can be the victor rather
than the victim. And to me, that’s the
beauty of the settlement and the letter of
retraction of phony lies and bullshit.
That’s what it means to me.

Ford Greene

Letters

The Labor-Black Mobilization march story

Iduar* note On Nt» SO. IH2 d rr«d* a

Tvr '
on ih« No*. 27. jT

i. who listened to an* inter* wn directed fn our
l mill uai monitor* to the center ol Lefeyera
- A &nrf rmily «u held to u
e of the KUo A/ur
jomtort eucceee/uJly,
n en orderly men-

ration. We no longer charg
that the Spartacist League •
Spartacus Youth League provoked
.the violence on that day.

. Without too-

to bor Blech Mobil
ihrou|h the perti<
nurd Ubor
officiol* end r tec
ioreed A pennil
Corumuuon end
near the CepioJ | PI |
be* Inning of the KUot route of the
march. »•* *coired frean the *p
P'opnet* police euthontie* on Nov.
22 During the neti four days, the

SL and i he SYL po* ted t hvuMhde of

placard* and dumfruitd hundred*
ol thouaaoda of leaflet* announce*
the La bo rB lack Mobiluation rally
The Labor Hiac* Mobilization
rally began at about 9 JO a m ce
Nov 27 and continued until about
12 00 pm engaging the pan ictpa
tioouf *.000. predominantly black*

At 12 40 If

ioai r> ‘burned that the Klan eould nar

march and. a* the polka withdrew, ipread violence and loonng But u
i>nan*vhnl2 1.. i, ■ — -»*» TW Mta.hfir- Tl«p

STfjc lUnoIiiiifltuii (Times [

a victory pany at the
in the Capitol area
happened on Nov r waa
the Klan did run march The
media - with the ooubU eacepoon
of the black preaa - ponrwyed the
anti Klan dcmceietraoon a* »d*
ipread violence and looting But it

introdrd dutuwtMn Thou*aad*
itrearoed up what was to haw been
the KKK march route (topped traf
fic. and exchanged victory aalutea
with driven

Poor to and at the time the Labor
Slack Mobi Illation dereootrraton
entered Lafayette Park on the op
poaite aide of the Park police oper
attccu were in progreae with police
unrig tear ga* agamic other* who
had e*»embtcd near Lafayette Park
The Labor-Black Mobilization deni

Neither the SL the SYL nor any
other component of our man
Labor Black Mobilization demon-
lira tier, tough) participated in. or
condoned any violence agaimi po-
lice

JAMES M R0BERT50N

Tk* kerucui League

EMILY TURNBULL

NauMal tocreun

l(MUcut««OLa(M
Wkinma ice

wv Photo

Moonie press retracts “libel that kills" (26 December 1983) and publishes statement by SL on successful Labor/Black
Mobilization of 5,000 which stopped the Ku Klux Klan on November 27, 1982.

brought by you against Moon’s propa-
ganda sheet, the Washington Times.
Congratulations for a job well done and
only done because you believed in what
real freedoms afforded to us by our F irst
Amendment.

I am one of these parents to whom
you have referred in Young Spartacus. I
also am a capitalist. If you include those
two and add an active Christian, it
would seem unlikely that we could get
along so well. I am a richer person for
having had a long day of talk with two of
your West Coast members. We ended
with mutual respect and understanding.
Mr. Moon turns you to Satan if you
slightly disagree with him or disagree
with his orders. Moon libelled the
Spartacist League and the League went
after justice and won We can now only
hope that the journalists whocontribute
to the Washington Times will wake up. I
would like to think that their affiliation
is all “heavenly deceit.” Flowever, I am
afraid the heavenly dollar is too tempt-
ing for all of them.

Daphne Greene

Anti-Moonie activist

ACLU Official Applauds

"Thank goodness that the truth
comes out.”

E.H Duncan Donovan
Vice President ACI IJ.
Southern California

The following is an excerpt from a
longer interview with Ford Greene,
attorney and ex- Unification Church
member, an anti- Moon activist who
endorsed the SL/SYL suit against the
Moonie libel (see Young Spartacus No.
115. February 1984). We do not agree
with everything Greene says here.

Satan is communism. And that’s why 1
love “Moonie God Apologizes to
Marxist ‘Satan”’ [headline of SL press
release of 26 December 19X3], You
don’t know how satisfying it was for me
to read that! It almost makes me join.

I had extreme reservations [about
endorsing the suit against the Washing-
ton Times] — I don’t like communism
because it’s collectivist, and I don’t like
collectivism. I like individualism. But
the principle is right. The principle is
right. And so, upon “mature reflection"
I did! And I’m glad. I’m proud, I
honestly am. I xeroxed your material so
I could give it to all my friends. Because
the thing is freedom of speech, and is
fascism. And I mean, really, what do I
know about the Spartacist League?
What. I’ve got some Ayn Rand image?
And just because of people that Ayn
Rand didn’t like in Russia and that she
so very convincingly portrayed as being
so horribly fascist doesn’t mean that the
Spartacist League is the same way.

The Spartacist League is a small but
incredibly powerful group as you know
much better than I But what they [the
Moonies] were trying to do is dirty. It’s
sleazy dirt. So I’m glad and I’m proud.
It's a victory for truth over lies. Because
the Moonie newspaper lied their asses
oi l and fabricated all kinds of intellectu-
ally heinous garbage, and the Spartacist
League fought back and kicked ass and
got a nice, full retraction. And I see that
as being a victory for, first, the intelli-
gence of human beings; second, for the
tree flow of information; and last but
not least, for the victory of truth over
lies, or life over death. Morality over
corruption, if you want to really get
nitty-gritty about it. Because that’s what
it is.

And what kind of ripples will How
therefrom I don’t know. I would hope
that it’s not a ripple but a tidal wave, but
I suspect it’s a lot closer to a ripple. But it

Over 70 Union Locals and
Officials Supported

I think it was a big v ictory to force the
Moonies to retract their libel. This was a
victory for all of us who were inv olved in
stopping the Klan from marching in
Washington and I think the Spartacist
League did a fantastic job in winning it
continued on page 15

I iBltTHALgjUS

ARE YOU

TARGET
OF THE
MOONIES?

lawiuil

funwup TTir Moonie,

■‘‘•'T ind viciously
Initiator, of the

---1 Mobilisation
Waahlngion. DC.
- provor-

— i more than
In Ihelr sights. Thl,
----- 1 y°ur support.

J Moonie

labeled the SL/SYl. |n?
5,000-strong labor/Blark
hat stopped the KKK in
November 27, f—

*<.ur.And|heM-— ---

*ne Spjrtjcistt |„ ;;wn
«•* need, and deervr.

Victories cost money. We need to
cover costs of publicity, legal and
investigative fees. Celebrate the
defeat of the Moonie libel with a
check to: Partisan Defense Com-
mittee, Box 99, Canal Street Station,
New York, NY 10013.

2 MARCH 1984

5

Workers to Power: For Workers' Militias and Soviets!

End of the Road for Bolivian Popular Front

LA PAZ. February 26— Bolivia today is
a classic case of the bankruptcy of
popular frontism. The government of
Hernan Siles Zuazo’s Unidad Demo-
cratica y Popular (UDP) flounders from
crisis to crisis, satisfying no one and
infuriating everyone. After numerous
reshufflings, Siles’ cabinet is made up of
representatives of his own bourgeois
Revolutionary Nationalist Movement-
Left (MNR1). the pro-Moscow Com-
munist Party (PCB), Christian Demo-
crats and military officers. Faced with
urgent social and economic problems
deriving from Bolivia’s backwardness,
18 years of plunder by military despots
and the capitalist world economic crisis,
during its year and a half in office the
UDP’s incapacity has been total. In this,
the poorest country in Latin America,
social contradictions are posed with
razor sharpness, and cannot be as-
suaged by sermons of class peace, nor by
the MNRI's stenciled wall slogans:
"Strikes and Work Stoppages— No!
Democracy and Productivity— Yes!’’
"A Democracy Without Order Perishes
in Disorder’’ and “Down With Ultra-
Left Demagogy!’’

The social contradictions are not
merely explosive — they are exploding
everywhere. Public employees strikes
paralyzed many government functions;
unions prevented even some ministers
from entering the ministries. Telephone
workers and employees of the Central
Bank of Bolivia are out. The country’s
doctors, employed by the government
or social security agencies, went on
strike for higher salaries; their average
monthly pay is less than US$40! For a
week all ground transport to and from
the capital city of La Paz was cut off by a
road blockade of peasants protesting
rising transport costs, low prices for
their produce, and the government’s
peasant affairs minister. In the south,
angry peasants held a train with 2,000
passengers hostage. Inside La Paz,
slum-dwellers associations — which hold
large outdoor meetings of women
dressed in the traditional garb of bowler
hats, multicolored shawls and mul-
tiple skirts — have organized marches
through the streets and blocked traffic
to protest transport costs. In Potosi
miners’ cooperatives blocked highways
and roads with stone barricades and
trucks. Meanwhile, factory workers’
organizations in La Paz and the indus-
trial center of Cochabamba officially
declared Siles an enemy of the working
class. All this follows the miners’ seizure
of the state mining trust COM I BOL last
spring, “resolved" by a decree establish-
ing “majority workers co-management”
of the mines.

The Central Obrera Boliviana (COB),
the powerful labor federation, centered

on the militant tin miners, threatened a
48-hour general strike to force Siles to
live up to the January 29 COB-
government agreement that ended a
seven-day hunger strike by 1,000 union
leaders. The COB bureaucrats, led by
class traitor maxima Juan Lechin,
repeatedly “postponed" the general
strike, makinga mockery of their’Tinal”
ultimatum to the government. After
dumping his minister of industry and

commerce, Siles finally pulled the
decrees out of his pocket and granted a
miserable 57 percent raise in the
minimum wage (to 47,000 Bolivian
pesos, or US$23.50 a month). In a
country where inflation is over 300
percent and is expected to reach 1.000
percent this year ( Present ia, La Paz. 26
February), Siles’ decrees represent a
huge wage cut. The UDP well deserves
the sobriquet “starvation democracy."

With the PCB acting as hatchetmen
for Siles, with the Lechin union bu-
reaucracy dissipating militancy through
repeated marches and demagogically
playing with the general strike, the
crying lack of coordination among the
struggles of different sectors poses the
danger of demoralization of the com-
bative Bolivian proletariat. The urgent
need is for a revolutionary. Trotskyist
leadership to smash the popular front of
starvation through a revolutionary
mobilization of the exploited for a
workers and peasants government. A
principal obstacle to the construction of
such a genuine Trotskyist party is the
centrist Partido Obrero Revolucionario
(POR) of veteran revisionist Guillermo
Lora. While denouncing the Siles re-

gime and calling for "proletarian revolu-
tion and dictatorship” in its press and in
slogans painted on walls all over La Paz.
the POR sows suicidal illusions with its
demand for “Bolivianization of the
armed forces," and "an army at the
service of the working class." and the
“formation of a revolutionary tenden-
cy" in the officer corps.

The stridently a/j//-internationalist
POR has twice helped destroy enor-

mous revolutionary opportunities in
the 1952 “National Revolution" with its
support to the "left wing” of the MNR
government, and in 1971 with its
capitulation to left-nationalist president
General Juan Jose Torres In the period
before Siles came to office, the POR
blocked with his bourgeois MNRI in the
unions and sought an “anti-imperialist
front" with parties of the UDP In
contrast, genuine Trotskyists would
emphasize that the arming of the
proletariat (workers’ militias) and the
formation of soviets (organs of workers
power centralizing the struggle against
the bourgeois government) are the only
defense against Siles’ attacks and the
ever-present threat of a new military
dictatorship. Proletarian revolution is
today posed pointblank as the only
conceivable way out for Bolivia’s
exploited masses!

And the danger of a right-wing
takeover looms larger each day. The
petty bourgeoisie is at wits’ end. On the

streets one hears the lament that at least
under the military there was order and
bread. Chaos is Bolivia’s other name
today. As in Weimar Germany, the
repeatedly devalued currency is virtual-
ly worthless; people must carry huge
bundles of bills around to purchase
necessities. And necessities are often
unavailable. "No hay pan" — there is no
bread — is a common sign in restaurants
and shops. (The U.S. government has
cut off wheat donations until the UDP
government lifts subsidies on bread and
other products.) Housewives get up at
daw n to stand in huge lines for cooking
oil and other commodities. I he black
market flourishes and dollars sell for
four times the official rate.

Large sections of the heterogeneous
urban petty bourgeoisie could be won to
the side of the proletariat by a resolute
struggle for workers state power, under
the leadership of a T rotskyist vanguard
But today, in the absence of that
leadership, enraged by a social crisis
without apparent solution and a govern-
ment drowning in its own impotence
and perfidy, much of the petty bourgeoi-
sie is being driven to the right, and
yearns for the return of a "caudillo"
strongman like the blood-soaked Ban-
zer. In addition to the never-ending
coup conspiracies within the officer
caste, talk abounds of a “constitutional
coup" by Banzer and his ally, “historic"
MNR leader Victor Paz Esienssoro.
head ot the nationalist government
formed in 1952. and participant in
Banzer's 1971 coup. This “constitution-
al coup" would consist of the ejection of
Siles by the parliamentary majority and
the formation of a right-wing bonapart-
ist regime to crack down on social
unrest, without relying solely on the
narrow base of an officer corps appar-
ently somewhat hesitant to retake
government power alone right away

Thus the popular front not only steals
the masses' miserable crusts of bread to
serve the International Monetary Fund
and the Bolivian bourgeoisie; it imperils
the very existence of the workers
movement and the difficult survival of
thousands of militant proletarians. For
the vast majority of the population of
this landlocked Andean country, libera-
tion from a life of incredible poverty
(and prevention of another bloody
“cocaine coup") requires the forging of
an internationalist revolutionary van-
guard party, part of the struggle to
reforge Trotsky’s Fourth International,
to lead the workers to power. ■

WORKERS VANGUARD

Marxist Working-Class Biweekly of the Spartacist League

□ $5/24 issues ol Workers Vanguard
(includes Spartacist) International rates

□ New □ Renewal S20/24 issues— Airmail
S5/24 issues— Seamail

□ $2/9 issues o( Young Spartacus

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(includes Spartacist)

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Address

City

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State

Zip.

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Make check* payable/mall to: Spartaclat Publishing Co., Bo* 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116

International Women’s
Day 1984

Women and
Revolution

Issue No. 28

• In Honor of the Women
of the Paris Commune

• Hamburg: Women Spark
Shipyard Occupation

• Labor Black Leagues Formed

• Silkwood: A Review

• Fight the New McCarthyism!

• Women and Permanent
Revolution in China (Part Two)

• Something About Incest

Single Issue $.50
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•UPI

Workers protest In the streets of La Paz, November 1982, one month after
popular front comes to power.

6

WORKERS VANGUARD

Toronto Rally to Defend Anti-Fascist Unionists Demands:

Stop the Frame-Up by
KKK/Nazi Union-Busters!

TORONTO — "Labor must show the
way. stop the Nazis and the KKK!"
chanted nearly 100 unionists, leftists
and other opponents of fascism who
packed the Canadian Union of Postal
Workers (CUPW) Toronto local hall
on February 1 1 . They had come to pro-
test the frame-up of two postal union-
ists, Paul Schneider and Mike Mares,
by self-declared KKK "intelligence di-
rector" William Lau Richardson and
his Nazi sidekick, George Graham.
Schneider and Mares, members of
Letter Carriers Union of Canada
(LCUC) Toronto Local I. face a pos-
sible ten years in jail on charges of
"assault causing bodily harm" for
defending themselves and others against
Richardson and Graham's provocative
harassment and intimidation of a
Toronto demonstration in defense ol
abortion rights last October

Behind Richardson and Graham’s
outrageous frame-up charges stands the
capitalist state whose attorney (known
as the "Crown” in this country where
Queen Victoria’s birthday is still cele-
brated as a solemn national holiday) is
prosecuting on behall of these fascist
scum. Id paraphrase the motto of the
RCMP (the “Mounties”), the govern-
ment always defends their man — and
Richardson has a long career as a
professional agent provocateur and
terrorist lor the capitalist state. Born in
the United States, this Ku Klux Klan
“chiel ol intelligence” has also worked
for the CIA and U.S. Army intelligence
as well as the RCMP In mid-1983,
Richardson was congratulated in the
KKK Action newsletter for becoming a
"Great Titan.”

After he moved to Canada. Richard-
son. an explosives expert, was hired by
the notorious union-busting outfit
Centurion Investigation, I td Richard-
son had admitted under oath that while
employed with Centurion he made
bombs that were planted in the cars of
union officials, militants and foreign
workers, in order to break strikes (e g .
the 1974 Douglas Aircraft strike) and
disrupt union organizing drives. Healso
brags about collecting information on
Chilean refugees in Toronto for ITT
Now this convicted criminal terrorist is
trying to throw Schneider and Marcs
behind bars.

Speaking at the rally Paul Schneider
explained why he and Mike Mares were
being targeted on these frame-up

C 'N

Spartacist League/
Spartacus Youth League
Public Offices

-MARXIST LITERATURE -

Bay Area

Fri 5 00-8:00 pm, Sal 3 00-6 00 pm
1634 Telegraph, 3rd Floor (near 17th Street)
Oakland. California Phone (415) 835-1535

Chicago

Tues 5 30-9 00 pm, Sal 2 00-5 30 p m
523 S Plymouth Court. 3rd Floor
Chicago. Illinois Phone (312) 427-0003

New York City

Tues 6 00-9 00 p m , Sat 12 00-4 00 p m
41 Warren St (one block below
Chambers St near Church St.)

New York, N Y Phone (212) 267-1025

Trotskyist League
of Canada

Toronto

Sat 1 00-5 00 p m

299 Queen St W., Suite 502

Toronto, Ontario Phone (416) 593-4138

V y

charges:

“Wc'rc supporters of the Trotskyist
League [Canadian sympathizing sec-
tion of the international Spartacist
tendency), a socialist organization that
stands against capitalism and the filth it

breeds like the KKK and Nazis

Richardson and Graham are coming
after us because wc went out to a
demonstration to defend Dr Morgen-
taler. a man who is a victim of racist
slander, a concentration camp survivor,
a guy who’s had his [abortion] clinics
raided by Gestapo methods. When
these creeps turned up we defended that
demonstration and ourselves against
them. That's why we're being framed

up. It’s because we’re opponents of the
Klan and fighters for socialism .”

This case has generated widespread
support across Canada. From the
Maritimes to British Columbia, more
than 300 organizations and individuals,
including five union locals and over 75
union officials, have endorsed the
demand ol the Committee to Defend
Anti-Fascist Unionists: "Drop the

Charges Against Paul Schneider and
Mike Mares!" To build the rally, some
7.000 leaflets and 1.000 posters were
distributed, and the Committee has
raised over S5.000. of which more than
SI. 200 was raised by its February II
Toronto rally.

As a demonstration of the widespread
backing lor Paul and Mike, on Febru-
ary I more than two dozen supporters
came out for their preliminary hearing.
With counsel provided by well-known
Canadian civil liberties lawyers Paul
Copeland and Clayton Ruby. Schneider
and Mares intend to pursue a vigorous
legal defense while placing no confi-
dence in the "justice” of the capitalist
courts That day in court gave a taste of
the lorces lined up behind Richardson
and Graham. Ostentatiously trying to
intimidate LCUC members from dem-
onstrating their solidarity with Schnei-
der and Mares were two postal supervi-
sors in uniform. In the corridors of the
courthouse Richardson. Graham and a
cop were overheard discussing issuing
arrest warrants for supporters of the two
postal unionists. And according to a
local reporter there were at least five
"intelligence" agents in the courtroom
that day.

Playing his part, the "Crown"
attorney attempted to stop the defense
from cross-examining their first witness.
Graham, about his Nazi and Klan
connections. But his objections were
overruled by the judge. Graham at first

denied any involvement with fascist
organizations, only to testify in the next
breath that he and Richardson spent
their time at the KKK headquarters in
Toronto. He went on to admit that he
personally knew every major Klansman
in Canada including the head of the
Canadian KKK, Alexander McQuirter.
Finally he was confronted in court with
an "Official Supporter of the National
Socialist White People’s Party" card
bearing his name.

At the center of the campaign to
defeat the KKK/Nazi frame-up of

Schneiderand Mares is the mobilization
ol mass protest by the labor movement
and minorities for whom Richardson’s
name is synonymous with union-
busting and racist terror. Speakers at
the rally represented a wide spectrum of
political opinion and organizational
affiliation, including Judy Rebickofthe
Ontario Coalition for Abortion Clinics;
Andre Kolompar. vice president of the
CUPW Toronto local; veteran Canadi-
an socialist Ross Dowson; Charles
DuBois. a Detroit auto worker and
organizer of the 27 November 1982
Labor/Black Mobilization that stopped
the Klan in Washington. DC; and a
spokesman for the Partisan Defense
Committee.

Statements of support were also
presented by the Canadian groups
representing the two wings of Ernest
Mandel’s pseudo-Trotskyist “United
Secretariat": the Revolutionary Work-
ers League (followers of .lack Barnes'
American SWP) and the pro-Mandcl
Socialist Workers Collective Ironically,
two evenings earlier the RWl politically
excluded Paul Schneider from a public
forum as a supporter of the Trotskyist
League, thereby preventing him from
presenting his case Meanwhile. Judy
Rebick and the SWC were peddling the
anti-communist calumny about TLC
“sectarianism" as they spoke from the
rally platform representing a broad
spectrum of political opinion

Another speaker at the rally. Ontario
Federation of Labour vice president and
Iron Workers Local 721 president John
Donaldson, pledged: "I'm going to use
this platform today to tell the labor
movement, and I speak specifically of
the OFL, that the OFL should rally all
groups, no matter what their political
philosophy is. all groups to get behind
these two brothers. And in so doing, we
can attack racism."

A few LCUC officials with their own
sinister connections to the fascists want
to sabotage this defense. In their local
Schneider and Mares have had to
combat open defenders of William Lau
Richardson and other fascist causes like
the Canadian Anti-Soviet Action Com-
mittee (CASAC. which encompasses
the old Canadian fascist Western
Guard, the Nazis and Klan). While
sabotaging any effort to stop the state in
conjunction with proven union-busting
fascist terrorists from jailing militant
members and defenders of the union,
the Local I executive (unsuccessfully)
attempted to gel the membership to
readmit a scab who attempted to run
over a shop steward in a recent strike!

Further. LCUC national president
Robert McGarry has conducted his own
witchhunt of Schneider and Mares to
sabotage LCUC support for this case of
vital interest to the whole labor move-
ment. one involving their own members.
For example, in a letter to the Vancou-
ver LCUC local McGarry wrote: "From
the information we have these members
should be treated the same as any two
members who belong to other rival
organizations outside of the LCUC and
who have gone out. taken part in a fight

and have been charged with assault."
The Vancouver local told McGarry to
shove it and endorsed the Schneider/
Mares case. As Schneider and Mares
pointed out in a January 17 leaflet co-
signed by live other Local I members.
McGarrv's witchhunt may not be unre-
lated to the fact that his two brothers.
Daniel and John, owned Centurion
Investigation. Ltd. and were convicted
for its terrorist activities. And it was
Centurion which employed Richardson
to conduct his murderous, union-
busting bombing!

The witchhunt against Paul Schnei-
der and Mike Mares is part ol a broader
attack on labor and minorities. Inside
LCUC Local I , supporters of the fascist
CASAC have put forward motions to
expel 32 members from the union.
Audrey Minton, a spokesman for the
Committee to Defend Anti-Fascist
Unionists, commented to the Toronto
Clarion. "Fascists crawl out of the
woodwork in the current atmosphere of
anti-Soviet hysteria.” What is posed by
the fight against this fascist frame-up
was laid out at the February 1 1 rally in a
warmly received statement by Oliver
Stephens, speaking for the TLC:

"Slopping this frame-up ol Paul and
Mike is going to take a lot more than
some arguments in the courts What
Richardson and Graham have started
with their charges, they and their ilk
intend to limsh in the streets, with their
lynch ropes, their gas ovens and their
death camps. The Trotskyist I eague of
Canada is snuggling to build a fighting,
multiracial working-class parts . to
sweep the lascists from the streets Wc
need a workers government to avenge
all our martyrs because there have been
too many. And wc will not let Paul and
Mike be added to that list What we
need is North American socialist revo-
lution to put an end to this system that
lets the Richardsons and lets the
Grahams walk the streets with
impunity!" ■

Spartacist Canada photos

Postal union militants Mike Mares (left) and Paul
Schneider. At right: Rally to defend anti-fascist
unionists in Toronto, February 11.

2 MARCH 1984

7

The “External Tendency”

From Cream Puffs to
Food Poisoning

THROUGH

f wotomt.

si

110 M0fc£

"tsess***

tUMHOS-

.■iun»

SM*r*0ST

External Rlghtisl

Continued

External Rightists

"-gasp*

SSas '^s&h*b>jc

,ernal WgM19**
AtW

ET fled from risks and responsibilities confronting revolutionists in the
Reagan years. Left: At behest of revisionist left, cops seal off SL’s Anti-
Imperialist Contingent, 27 March 1982. Right: SL-initiated Labor/Black
Mobilization of 5,000 stops the KKK in Washington, D.C. 27 November 1982.

On 17-18 December 1983 the Sparta-
cist League/U.S. held a well attended
plenum of our Central Committee.
Although the plenum was convoked to
deal with other subjects and problems,
an exotic issue was an agenda point on
the self-styled “External Tendency”
(ET) of the international Spartacist
tendency (iSt). The plenum directed that
we prepare an article for publication in
Workers Vanguard.

The ET claims to be a political
tendency wrongly excluded from the
iSt. This is their genteel way of saying
that they quit. As we have remarked
before, in the political climate of the
“Reagan years," with U.S. imperialism
making ready for war against the Soviet
Union, a slice of our party membership
has cut and run. Most of these quits
grow out of fear of this period and
distaste for the SL‘s response to it: our
work among the black masses to
galvani/e militant resistance to fascist
provocation and racist terror; our
political confrontations with the pro-
imperialist union bureaucracy; and
above all our Trotskyist defense of the
USSR against imperialism.

The ETs are composed of several
interlinked clots united by their anti-
Spartacist hostility. They mainly take
their coloration from a couple of small-
time aspirants to union-bureaucratic
influence on the U.S. West Coast. These
characters logically would fit right in
with the Weinsteinites, late of the
Socialist Workers Party, behind whom
stands the lure of America's “main-
stream" social-democrats, the Demo-
cratic Socialists. There are also some
Canadians, former Mensheviks and
cliquists in the Canadian section, and
some Germans whose leader, long a
rightist critic, quit after having opposed
our Iran slogan, “Down with the shah,
down with the mullahs!" The Germans
quickly pronounced the iSt beyond
reform; the North Americans still
profess a desire for readmission to fight
the iSt's purported degeneration.

Though linked by the rightist
character of quits in this period, the ET
is a partly accidental and wholly
unprincipled association. Never a ten-
dency inside the party, these dropouts
coalesced in October 1982 into a
grouping with the posture — widely
diffenngly applied — of being a loyal
opposition professing general support

increasingly exhibits hyper-centralist,
paranoid and personalist characteris-
tics. These tendencies on the part of the
leadership have reached a point where
they call into question both the possibil-
ity of significantly enlarging the organi-
zation and of reproducing Trotskyist
cadres within it.”

— “Declaration of an external
tendency of the iSt.”

15 October 1982

These sentences are themselves a decla-
ration of bankruptcy. The ETs quit,
found one another, and declared them-
selves to be a “tendency" — having
already separated themselves from and
spurned the one organization they
recognize to be the embodiment of
revolutionary Marxism on this planet.

Darkness at Noon?

To alibi their absence of political
spine the ETs want to lay the separation
at our door. They refer to their cowardly
departures as “purges,” and describe
themselves as having been “driven out"
and even “expelled." Let us see what the

slightly biased reports of union meet-
ings. based on w hat I thought he wanted
to hear rather than what I thought or
what had actually transpired."

Mandel. self-styled defender of
workers democracy against the bureau-
crats of the SI. regime, was also in hot
water with the conference delegates for
disrupting a Socialist Workers Party
(SWP) public forum two months
earlier. This was the only breach of
workers democracy in the history of the
iSt. and was acknowledged as such in
Workers Vanguard (see H- LNo. 259. 27
June 1980). The event took place in the
Bay Area at a moment when the SWP
had already been for some time exclud-
ing SLers from SWP “public" forums
falsely claiming we were "disrupters."
At this forum, unaccountably, a sizable
SL intervention team was permitted
inside, and found itself in effective
control. This fortuitous occurrence was
a golden opportunity to make the SWP
have, for a change, a public “public"
meeting with an orderly democratic
discussion. But, finding themselves w ith
the upper hand, our comrades w-ere
unruly and gave the SWP an excuse to
dissolve the forum. We made public self-
criticism in WV. and internally fought
for a full accounting. Bob Mandel was
the main architect of the incident, as he
admitted after a struggle and acknowl-
edged in his written statement.

Co-leader of the West Coast ETs is
Harlan, who resigned from the SL in
September 1981 complaining of “...an
internal life characterized by a defen-
sive. hierarchical regime combined with
a personalistic, Jesuitical method of
internal argument and discussion. This
process has advanced to the point where
the S.L./S.Y.L. membership is increas-
ingly composed of ‘true believers’ and
cynics." Harlan’s god-that-failed lan-
guage bespeaks his renegacy.

Harlan’s quit came just six days after
a Bay Area district membership meeting
declared him “...unfit for membership
in the organized Marxist movement.”
Why? Because the now so anti-
bureaucratic Harlan had grossly abused
his position as a member of the Control
Commission for his own factional
purposes. Harlan had gone into opposi-

learned that just prior to the conference.
Mandel had taken a job circumventing
union hiring hall procedures. A hypo-
crite to boot, Mandel had publicly
objected to striking union brothers
being put at the top of the list for
dispatching from the hiring hall, ahead
of Mandel. although he had argued in
the union just two nights earlier for
"solidarity" with the very same strikers.
Mandel’s signed statement dated 17
August 1980 acknowledged this and
admitted “lying to the party for years.”

Today Mandel claims the written
statement was obtained from him while
he was in a state of “collapse.” (Since he
did not attempt to repudiate it until
June 1982 we can only marvel at the
length of this "collapse.") His repudia-
tion itself speaks volumes. “I did not ‘lie
to the party for years*," he protests. He
explains he merely “...gave Nelson

to our program and hostility to our
“bureaucratic" leadership. The ETs pay
unacknowledged tribute to their politi-
cal heterogeneity by their choice of
name. They define themselves purely in
organizational terms, “external" to the
iSt — an open appeal for rotten blocs.

The ET’s central thesis was that:
“...while the SL's program remains
revolutionary, its leadership collective

record reveals about these victims of SL
“bureaucratism."

We will begin with Rob Mandel, a
petty-bourgeois New Left princeling
who now howls the loudest about the SL.
"regime." Mandel quit at the 1980 SL
National Conference, in the face of
overwhelming sentiment by the confer-
ence delegates to seek his expulsion. The
delegates were furious when they

Some recent
SL internal
bulletins. What
kind of "bureau-
cratic” party
scrupulously
makes available
to all its members
the attacks
penned by
hostile oppo-
nents who
walked out years
earlier?

8

WORKERS VANGUARD

tion over the SL’s line on the PATCO
(air controllers) strike. He argued a
version of the reformist Communist
Party’s (CP) consumer-boycott line —
“flying is scabbing." This posture of
“solidarity” via consumer was simply an
alibi for the labor bureaucrats’ refusal to
take effective action to defend PATCO:
to shut down the airports by real
solidarity action by pilots. Machinists.
Teamsters — the unions that continued
to service the airports.

Harlan’s one co-thinker on PATCO
was a recent recruit from the CP to the
Spartacus Youth League. Lisa. Follow-
ing a youth meeting where Lisa found
herself a minority of one. Harlan
encouraged her to bring organizational
charges against the Bay Area youth
leadership; he aided her in writing them,
and then proceeded to launch a uni-
lateral “Control Commission investiga-
tion” into the charges brought by
himself.

Harlan had every right to make
common cause factionally with theSYL
comrade, and no right to do so under
Control Commission cover. Harlanquit
when his manipulation of the youth
discussion was exposed. He left his
youthful co-factionalist behind to con-
tinue the struggle. No organizational
measures were taken against Lisa for her
cover-up of Harlan’s machinations. I isa
wrote up her views on the PATCO
discussion in a document which was
printed in the SYL internal bulletin. She
argued for these views in her branch.
And. although she was still a minority of
one at the time of the SYL national
meeting, she was given equal time there
to present her case. Lisa resigned on
13 December 1981. still lamenting the
iSt’s lack of “the spirit of democratic
centralism."

Life in the Spartacist gulag is rough.
And we even have our own Siberia, the
Trotskyist League of Canada. Canadian
ET leaders Nason and Riley claim to be
victims of a “major purge.” Actually,
they both quit. Riley’s resignation said:
“In my 6-1/2 years in the organization 1
never really assimilated any Cannon-
ism — instead on theorg. question I have
always tended to New Leftism.” Nason
wrote: “I am a Menshevik now and have
been throughout my membership in
the organization.” When the ET was
formed, two years later, Nason and
Riley’s quits had become transformed
into the following:

"The successor theSL/US leadership in
conducting the purge in Canada was
aided by the extreme organizational
loyalty and consequent disorientation
of their victims. Knowing the charges to
be false, yet continuing to support the
leadership and. most importantly, the
program of the tendency, the targets of
the attack responded passively in a
futile attempt to remain in the
organization."

Sounds a lot like the Moscow Trials.
Only we wonder what we used to
approximate the cellars of Lubianka,
not being possessed of the instruments
of state power. Did the Canadian
section of a couple of dozen members
shine bright lights in your eyes while
keeping you up all night with your feet
in pails of ice w-ater? Did Mandel
“collapse” after being given the third
degree in a dark warehouse full of old
hot tubs in San Francisco?

Big parts of the ET founding declara-
tion read like Darkness at Noon At the
same time, the document is replete with
quotes from the Left Opposition’s
struggle against the rise of Stalinism.
Some people have no sense of
proportion!

I rotsky in 1940 observed in a letter to
a Shachtman supporter: “You state in
your letter that the main issue is not the
Russian question but the ‘internal
regime.’ 1 have heard this accusation
often since almost the very beginning of
the existence of our movement in the
United States.” Indeed, Trotsky’s obser-
vation indicates the depth of the
ideological pressures of the fantastically
wealthy American imperialist bourgeoi-

sie on the workers movement, expressed
as virulent and philistine anti-Leninism.
In this country, with its economically
combative but racially divided and
politically backward working class, and
its powerful and arrogant ruling class, it
has never been easy to be a communist.
A whiff of repression, a hint of war and a
little class struggle can easily produce
hysterical anti-1 .eninists ol the ET stripe
(yellow).

The Russian Question
Comes Home

Politically the El is animated by
trade-union economist appetite and a
deep Hindi from I rotskyist defense of
the Soviet Union, which particularly in
the context of today’s wretched rightist
“left" puts us way out in front, with our
programmatic positions from Afghani-
stan and Poland to Central America.
Although they seek support based on
the “regime” question, and hence they

Soviet intervention into Poland, which
the ET quotes:

“We take responsibility in advance lor
whatever idiocies and atrocities they
(the Stalinists) will commit ”

1 o show how shamefully we covered up
this position, the FT document then
quotes Irom fTFNo. 289 thcsupposedly
“official version”:

“// the Kremlin Stalinists, in their
necessaril i brutal, stupid ivai . intervene
militarily to stop it. we will support litis.
And we take responsibility in advance
lor this; whatever the idiocies and
atrocities they will commit, we do not
flinch from delendmg the crushing ol
Solidarity's counterrevolution."

The ET document triumphantly urges
its readers to “think twice” about “the
subtle difference between the internal
and the public position.” We thought
three times, and either wc’rc really very
stupid, because the distinction between
these two statements of ours escapes us.
or the demagoguery of the “Cmippe IV.

orientation to members of the iSt — you
know, the serious, hard-working, devot-
ed socialists still inexplicably to be
found in our ranks. In fact their
orientation is not to our members, but
to the actively hostile elements among
our ex-membership. Case in point.
I here was a prominent senior iSt
comrade expelled in 1982. It’s not that
easy to get expelled from the iSt. so the
ETs were sure they were on to some-
thing big. They found out the comrade's
new whereabouts, which shouldn’t have
been easy, anti phoned him up. I hey
said: we know you were expelled, we
know it was a frame-up. we’d love to
send you our documents. The comrade
replied: I’d love to get your documents,
but I have to tell you, there was nothing
unjust about my expulsion. He never
heard from the ET again, and he never
got the documents.

The ET in Action

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SL protest against the seating of genocldal Pol Pot at the UN last September
triggered more ET accusations of Stalinophilla.

acquired a couple of West Coast
elements whose differences with the iSt
program always went in the opposite
direction, the ETs political profile is
manifestly Shachtmanite. The ET says
that since their departure, the iSt has
gone Stalinist. We knew we would hear
from them when we semi-seriously
christened an SL-led contingent “the
Yuri Andropov Brigade” (see last issue
of WV). They similarly objected at some
length to our demonstration last fall
against the UN seating of former
Cambodian mass murderer, and present
U.S. imperialist puppet against Viet-
nam, Pol Pot. If the ET were more
honest, they would admit that they
hated it when we hailed the Soviet Red
Army’s military intervention in Afghan-
istan. Our unconditional military de-
fense of the deformed workers states is
not new.

What is new is the heated up anti-
Soviet climate. In every iSt section,
particularly outside the more strongly
led SL/U.S., it was our stance on
Poland that brought U.S. imperialism’s
new Cold War home to our weakest
elements. Polish Solidarnosc, company
union lor the CIA and Western bankers,
evolved into the stalking horse for
bloody capitalist restoration. Our line to
“Stop Solidarnosc Counterrevolution”
put us right up against the European
social-democrats and the American
“AFL -CIA.” who w'ere leading the “free
trade unionism” chorus on behalf of the
U.S. State Department and NATO.

As evidence of the iSt’s newfound
“Stalinophilia” over Poland, the Ger-
man ET in its major opus (“Where is the
iST Going?” dated February 1983)
points to the September 1981 confer-
ence of our German section as the
pinnacle of Spartacist degeneration and
cover-up. The resolution adopted at
that conference, the ET says, contained
a hideous formulation so openly pro-
Stalinist that it “could be used for
purges in the organization, but it
couldn’t be used in public.” Here’s the
sentence, regarding the possibility of a

Internationale” aka German ET is best
summarized by the old Yiddish word
chutzpah.

The Wall Street Journal took the
trouble to threaten us after our anti-
Solidarnosc New York demonstration.
The ETs are among those who found
this a good time to leave. Then the
further selection took place. Comrades
get conservatized, demoralized, scared,
tired. Some quit. But only some of those
choose to make a program of their
weaknesses. The ET has also had some
success picking up characters whose
manner of departure from the iSt was so
shameful that the ET prefers not to
acknowledge them as recruits. With
other ex-members the ET has had less
success.

ET enthused
over U.S.
Marine dead in
Beirut. The
further the ET
is from the
scene the more
bloodthirsty
they are; when
they get close
to the needs of
the U.S. labor
bureaucracy,
they go tame,
as over the
sellout of
PATCO.

The ET likes to posture as having an

if)

If the ETs had wanted to look like a
loyal opposition, it wouldn’t be hard to
do. In the period since the ET quit, the
SL has been made the target of physical
exclusionism and the vile slanders that
seek to justify the exclusionism, on the
part of the reformist U.S. “left.” By
standing out in front on the Russian
question, particularly with our slogans
on Central America, where our call for
military victory to the leftist insurgents
cuts squarely against the pro-imperialist
popular front with the Democratic
Party which our reformist opponents
see as their way to get rich in the Reagan
years, we have come to he seen by the
“left” as in the way. At El Salvador
demonstrations (and in other kinds of
tense situations when the size and
discipline of our contingents becomes a
particularly significant factor), we have
been glad of the disciplined support of
numerous ex-SL members. And many
SL ex-members are proud that they
stood with us when, more times than we
like to remember in the last four years,
we have put our organization on the line
as the hard def enders of the black people
and others against racist terror backed
up by the state. The key to understand-
ing the ET is to know that while they are
fond of telling us we should have
marched with them in this or that pro-
Democratic parade, and may in fact
turn up with very revolutionary slogans
for some large tame liberal event, when
it counts they are nowhere. When the SL
is called upon to demonstrate against
racist cop brutality, when we spearhead
mass labor/black mobilizations to stop
the fascists — issues tending to bring out
the worst in cops — the ETs can be
counted upon to disappear.

Where were the ETs on 27 November
continued on page 10

2 MARCH 1984

9

T

Doug Fraser: Company Cop

While Carter Stew*.

Soviet Army Roto B*

Hail Red Army!

Even if the ET Is
not interested in
defending the
SL's union
supporters, why
didn't they
come out Just to
meet the 400
militants at this
29 October 1983
defense

demonstration?

campaign for a port shutdown against
the war in El Salvador. When the
bureaucrats put Gow on trial for
picketing a ship bound for El Salvador.
Keylor launched an “independent in-
vestigation"; during the trial Keylor sat
silent when caucus supporters were
hauled from the room and the city cops
were called in. Keylor’s line was that the
SL deliberately set Gow up for expul-
sion as part of its supposed turn away
from the unions. Gow, however, galva-
nized enough support among his union
brothers to defeat the expulsion at-
tempt. Key to this victory was a picket of
a South Africa-bound ship, protesting
the execution of African National
Congress fighters. Keylor mocked the
action but it found a ready response in
the union local, which is two-thirds
black.

In the 29 January 1982 issue of
Keylor’s longshore newsletter, he red-
baited Stan Gow in no uncertain terms.
Keylor is a former CP supporter who
lived through the McCarthy period. He
knew exactly what he was doing when
he penned these lines:

“Some Brothers commented thul the
famous January 6 Mil ITANT CAU-
CUS attack on Keylor sounded unbe-
lievable and at times incomprehensible.
That's right — the leaflet was not written
for longshoremen! The leaflet was
written for a wider audience than Local
10; it was to be reprinted and quoted
Irom in publications addressed to the
left in Chicago, Toronto. Melbourne.
Hamburg. Paris and London. The lies
and distortions contained therein could
be used to discredit Keylor outside the
union." (emphasis in original)

Beware the outside agitator! This is the
ETs’ real face, the implementation of
their stance against the SL "regime."

Worse than Debsian

Thrtame ET opus distributed at our
national conference explicitly links the
SL’s supposed turn away from the
unions to our strategic orientation to the
black proletariat, and especially our
efforts to build labor/black defense

“External

Tendency”...

(continued from page 9)

1982 when the SL-led Labor/Black
Mobilization of 5,000 stopped the Klan?
Where were the West Coast ETs,
normally such a peripatetic lot, when
400 people, mainly union militants and
black activists, marched in Oakland on
29 October 1983 to defend SL support-
ers Lauren Mozee and Ray Palmiero
against a racist anti-labor frame-up?

The ETs have other fish to fry. They
carry out union “work.” And their work
is what you would expect from a couple
of small-time opportunists who found
our party— which through collective
internal struggle seeks to arm fallible
individuals politically against alien class
pressures represented by the pro-
imperialist labor bureaucracy — a hin-
drance to their egos and aspirations.

The main document (dated 23 June
1983) distributed by the ET to our last
national conference discerned in our
work, and in our black-centered prole-
tarian perspectives, a retreat from “the
working class." The document claimed
our policy that phone union stewards
should be elected by the ranks to
represent them, not appointed by the
sellout bureaucrats, was a flight from
union work. And they cried out in
shocked disbelief at the SL’s likening
UAW president Douglas Fraser's join-
ing the Chrysler Board of Directors to
the German Social Democrats’ voting
for war credits on 4 August 1914. This
was the point at which the Social
Democrats acted not as just sellouts but
as direct agents of the Kaiser. I likewise
Fraser became an open company cop in
the pay of the auto bosses. But to the
ET, calling Fraser a company cop is
tantamount to saying the UAW has
become a company union.

The ET implores the SL to "return to
its Trotskyist analysis of the contradic-
tory nature of the union bureaucracy."
Elsewhere they talk about the “dual
nature" of that bureaucracy, without
ever revealing what this “dual nature" is.
In his last words on this question
Trotsky made his position crystal clear:
“It [monopoly capitalism] demands of
the reformist bureaucracy and the labor
aristocracy, who pick up the crumbs
Irom its banquet table, that they become
transformed into its political police
before the eyes ol the working class”
(“Trade Unions in the Epoch of Imperi-
alist Decay”). And this was not some
new trend espied by Trotsky only in
1940. In a 1935 article (“Advice on
Canadian Farmers") he observed: “The
passing over from fraction work in
revolutionary trade unions to illegal
work under war conditions is imper-
ceptible. The trade union bureaucracy
becomes the police spv system— that is
all."

The union bureaucracy is not “con-
tradictory" per se but it reflects the class
contradiction between the capitalist
state and the unions as defensive
organizations of the working class. The
central task of revolutionists in the
unions is therefore the struggle for the
complete and unconditional independ-
ence of the unions in relation to the
capitalist state. This means a struggle to
oust the social-imperialist labor traitors.

so that the unions can become instru-
ments of the revolutionary movement of
the working class, rather than secondary
instruments of imperialist capitalism to
discipline the workers and obstruct
revolution.

Serving the Bureaucrats

The ET’s whining that we called
F raser by his right name only shows that
the ET shares his standpoint —
criticizing the leadership is an attack on
the union, i.e., the bureaucracy is the
union. When the ET accuses the SL of
abandoning the workers, they mean the
labor bureaucracy. They have no
stomach for the Leninist regime of the
revolutionary party, but lots ol sympa-
thy for poor old maligned Doug Fraser.
In practice, it quickly comes down to
acting as the bureaucracy's agent to
drive revolutionists out of the unions.

The ET's real program is demon-
strated concretely in the actions of its
one trade-union supporter of local note.
Howard Keylor in the International
Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen's
Union (ILWU) Local 10. When Keylor
broke politically with the SL his first act
in the union was to redbait his fellow
unionist. SL supporter and Militant
Caucus spokesman Stan Gow. When
Gow was witchhunted by the local
leadership, Keylor stood aside and
offered alibis for the witchhunters.

Keylor opposed the Militant Caucus’

Trotskyist positions the ET loves to
hate: defense of the USSR, class-
struggle opposition to sellout labor
tops.

10

leagues. For the ETs this is merely a
latter-day “community organizing"
diversion from class struggle in the
unions. This view is worse than Debs-
ian, as it sees "the working class" as
separate from and counterposed to the
black plebeian masses. The ET s see
black struggle through the eyes of a
petty union bureaucrat whose idea of
the “working class" is his own dues base.

Indeed, the West Coast ET’s immedi-
ate response to our campaign around
stopping the Klan in Washington on 27
November 1982 (an action brought off
by our small communist forces by mass
agitation among black unionists and
their unions) was to urge us in a letter
dated 3 December to make an urgent
turn toward the Canadian Chrysler
strike. Scarcely able to conceal their
disdain for our anti-fascist work, the
ET letter mentions the D.C. action
as evidence that the SL is still capable
of waging a campaign when it wants
to. They urged us to get back to
real business by publishing a mass-
distribution WV supplement on Chrys-
ler solidarity.

Sounds very proletarian. In fact the
short-lived Canadian Chrysler strike,
deliberately called only after the U.S.
locals had been cooled down, involved a
few thousand workers; the plant accessi-
ble to us. in Windsor, was notable for
a workforce containing a high propor-
tion of recent East European anti-
communist immigrants. Meanwhile up
in Sudbury, the nickel/copper miners
were locked in a bitter, months-long
struggle against massive cuts in the
workforce, placing at stake the survival
of a key and historically militant sector
of the Canadian proletariat. Our Cana-
dian comrades, instead of making
empty agitation around Chrysler (to
impress U.S. UAW officials, presuma-
bly), were making trips to Sudbury to
sell their front-page article directed to
the Sudbury miners. And they were
actively campaigning with the rest of us
to spread the word about and collect
some money for the Labor/Black
Mobilization of 5,000 that stopped the
Klan in Washington. Our WV supple-
ment was "We Stopped the Klan!"
highlighting our slogan, "Finish the
Civil War!”, and we distributed in
excess of half a million copies. Evidently
the Canadian ETers did not share
the West Coasters’ contempt for the
D C. action, as on December 13 three
Toronto members of the ET sent a small
contribution, sincerely appreciated,
along with their first protest regarding
the "Yuri Andropov Brigade."

In ILWU Local 10, all Keylor saw fit
to say about this demonstration under
communist leadership, the most massive
anti-fascist action in decades bucked by
key sections of labor, was that the
Militant Caucus and the SL “are
increasingly directing their organizing
activity away from the unions" toward
ghetto unemployed. And Keylor has yet
to make any mention of the union-
centered Mozee/ Palmiero defense case,
despite his own union having endorsed
the defense rally held in Oakland. The
ET knows what it doesn’t like: militant
black-centered labor action, evidently.

II you touch the black question in
America you touch social tinder, you
touch revolution. And the ETs have no
stomach for struggle.

ET Goes Bloodthirsty

The ETs aren’t above pretending to a
left-oppositional lace upon occasion. Of
course, their leftism is in direct
proportion to the distance involved
Irom the social-imperialist labor skates.
Thus they proclaimed, “Imperialists
Out of Lebanon— By Any Means
Necessary!" following the bombing of
the U.S. Marine compound in Beirut.
The ETs solidarize with whoever blew
up the Marines, as an act of "anti-
imperialism.” But no side in Lebanon is
fighting imperialism! The ETs tell us
their line is “U.S. Marines: Live Like

WORKERS VANGUARD

ET Bulletin
W V Photo

<47..

LV/U

WV Photo

ETs own photo (top left) shows Howard Keylor and his hoped-
for white constituency at longshoremen's mass picket in
Richmond, 27 June 1982. Bottom left: SL supporter Stan Gow
with black union brothers at the same demonstration; at right,
larger crowd shot of demo shows it was 95 percent black.

Pigs, Die Like Pigs.” Of course, this is a
very attenuated and vicarious blood-
thirstiness— we don't see Mandcl strap-
ping himself to a load of dynamite and
hitting Bay Area army bases. Or the
Canadian ET shooting up Canadian
army barracks.

In the wake of the Beirut bombing,
with Reagan launching an invasion of
Grenada to divert attention from the
debacle, WV headlined: “Marines Out
ol Lebanon. Now, Alive!" We were
deluged with ET documents taking us to
task for this allegedly social-patriotic
stance. In “Marxism and Bloodthirsti-
ness” (WV No. 345, 6 January) we
explained the elementary proposition
that Marxists are not in favor of killing
for its own sake. We stand for the
victory of just causes. Thus we have a
stake in the victory of the Salvadoran
insurgents against the bloody junta and
its U.S. imperialist backers. In Grenada
we had a side — in defense of the self-
determination of that small black island
against the U.S. invasion. We are not
bloodthirsty and we are not pacifists, as
the violence of the capitalists does not
allow the oppressed to renounce the use
of force necessary to accomplish the
victory of just causes. But even when we
have a side, as at that moment over
Grenada, where we said "U.S. Out Dead
or Alive." we don’t share the ETs’
vicarious blood lust which glories in the
killing of young men for the crimes of
their rulers.

The ETs want to find a contradiction
between our stand on the Beirut
bombing and our remark during the
1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon that in
Israel "opposition to the war right now
depends, above all, on how many
soldiers come home in coffins" ( WV No.
309, 9 July 1982). We observed correctly
that, particularly given the small size of
Israel, casualties have an enormously
exaggerated impact and therefore a
political effect. It is the political effect
that we arc after, it is not dead young
Israelis for the hell of it. In any case the
ETs new posture, the ET red in tooth
and claw, is just window-dressing. At
the time of the Israeli invasion of
Lebanon, the ET omitted any mention
of defense of the Palestinians. Mandel
says this was because of "tendency
considerations.” We think the tendency
consideration was Mandel himself —
throughout the summer of 1982 Mandel
was quietly attending meetings of the
rad-lib New Jewish Agenda.

A postscript on the Lebanon debate
comes from the West Coast ETs Ursula,
who opined to several comrades last
November that the SL would not have
had the "Marines Out of Lebanon,
Now, Alive" slogan before our “turn"
away from the unions to the ghettos.
Asked to explain the connection, she
replied that “there are a lot of blacks in
the military." Well we didn’t derive our
line from the existence of black Marines
in Lebanon. But we take the accusation
as a compliment. The bourgeoisie has
the opposite attitude — its troops are
expendable and its black troops are
most so.

A Modest Proposal

The discussion on the ET at the SL
Central Committee plenum centered on
the disjuncture of the ET posture: on the
one hand, they claimed to be our loyal
opposition, seeking to reverse unjust
exclusion from a deformed revolution-
ary party; at the same time, whenever
our party is out front, its meager forces
and resources committed to urgent
undertakings, and the target of the
combined hostility of the capitalist state
and the reformist “left." then does the
ET show at best indifference to our
survival and often an active appetite to
see us go down.

The plenum discussion acknowledged
again a point from our last national
conference: that the ET's polemics, both
their rightist critiques of us and their
occasional forays into leftism, serve a

pedagogical function for our members.
The ET has been useful as a crystalliza-
tion of everything that is backward and
wrong in the SL; particularly during a
time when the risks of communist
membership are palpably great, com-
rades with differences tend to just drop
out rather than fight inside for their
views. We use the ET to keep us on our
toes. Having been, through our internal
bulletin, a presence in our national
conference, as sophisticated proponents
ol a kind of Debsian disdain for our
efforts to sink real roots among the
black working people, the ET's argu-
ments on Lebanon were a foil which
vastly enriched our “Marxism and
Bloodthirstiness" article and associated
propaganda.

The motion coming out of theplenum
was to publish in Workers Vanguard an
article proposing to the ET an offer of
readmission to the iSt, necessarily
excluding of course those few individu-
als expelled from the iSt for gross crimes
against the workers movement. The ET
would have full membership rights
based on democratic-centralist democ-
racy and discipline. That is, on the basis
of our norms, which are well known to
these people: party activity, financial
support and discipline toward oppo-
nents; the right to responsible work and
appropriate party posts, and the respon-
sibility to do such work and accept such
posts; the right to factions, which

includes the right to private factional
deliberation.

In taking the decision to offer the ET
a second chance to fight for their views
inside the iSt. the SL plenum took as a
negative yardstick the bureaucratic
Socialist Workers Party (SWP). The
SWP has lately finished a massive
political purge as. having failed to
achieve any niche as reformists. Jack
Barnes has shifted his party toward
becoming would-be Stalinist hangers-
on. The bureaucratization of the SWP
was the organizational handmaiden of
its transit through centrism to left-
reformism: in 1963-66 the Farrell Dobbs
regime got rid of about a third of the
party membership, beginning with the
expulsion of the Revolutionary Tenden-
cy (RT, forerunner of the SL) simply for
its views. The ex post facto justification
of the political purge of the RT was the
explicit rationale for the SWP’s 1965
Organizational Resolution effectively
banning factional rights in the party.

Now again the SWP’s attempt to shift
its place on the political landscape has
had organizational expression. Today’s
reformist and bureaucratic SWP ex-
ploded in factional ferment when
Barnes started seeking to shift his party
in a quite Stalinoid direction. Over
about the last three years, perhaps a
third of the SWP membership has been
dispatched, now to go in their various
directions. Barnes’ party canceled its

last national convention so as to finish
booting its dissidents out in piecemeal
waves of purge, because the aforemen-
tioned 1965 Organizational Resolution
and subsequent case law had left only
one partial loophole in the abolition of
party democracy: the pre-convention
discussion period.

Having the SWP horrible example
before our eyes helped the SL plenum
arrive at the decision to offer to engage
in an act of even excessive democracy
toward the ET. who by their own choice
made themselves “external" to our
democratic-centralist party and internal
life. Yes, comrades of the ET. sooner or
later and if we do not take state power
first, a revolutionary Marxist organiza-
tion outlives the effective political
lifetime of its founding cadre; the
defense of the party's original purpose
and intent characteristically involves
organizational discontinuity (i.e., split
on behalf of the new revolutionary
generation). But not yet for us, ETs, and
in any case you stand in no relationship
to that process.

ET Petition: Worthy of
COINTELPRO

The plenum discussion was reported
to the SL membership, and we began
work on the present article to publicly
present our offer. And then we found
that the ET was circulating a petition
lyingly charging us with physically
assaulting Bob Mandel at a demonstra-
tion. Can the timing be an accident?
Well maybe, but nobody can blame us
for believing that somebody got wind of
the plenum discussion and rushed to
foreclose the reintegration option.

The petition is a classic provocation.
Its core is this statement:

"Further. I understand that Bob
Mandel was physically assaulted by an
Sl. supporter, and a Militant Caucus
member in the course of a political
dispute. While I did not witness the
assault. I want to make clear to the SL/
U.S. and to the Militant Caucus that
I condemn this and any use of phys-
ical violence within the workers
movement.”

This is a device straight out of the FBI’s
COINTELPRO campaign to frame up
and destroy the left. Mandel alleges an
assault to have taken place at a San
Francisco demonstration on 3 Decem-
ber 1983. Well, what happened there
was — nothing. Mandel showed his face
at a labor demo and was loudly

continued on page 12

I PROTEST DECLARATION

'i"6 1::;;,11;;1" o^tly „01 Nnii

u b"i«v.d t„,v c„u,a , „

Orgnni zn 1 1

ET’s COINTELPRO-style petition fits right in with reformist left’s lying
portrait of SL as disrupters, goons, crazies and police agents.

11

2 MARCH 1984

ET vs. the Test of Truth

It’s always hard to judge a political
dispute from a distance. Those who
have some familiarity with the SL.
some involvement in radical social
struggle in this country, some direct
knowledge of the concrete political
events so hotly disputed by the
contending parties should be able, by
examining the actions and written
materials of ourselves and the ET. to
make a determination of rights and
wrongs. Those at a great distance,
however, would properly hesitate
before making definitive judgments.
But there are decisive tests which can
be applied at a distance. The matter of
simple truthfulness is a decisive test:
the liar is one with something to hide.

The German ETs long opus,
"Where is the iST Going?" of February
1983. is the only attempt of any wing of
the ETs thus far to deal comprehen-
sively and "theoretically" with our
party. The core of its analysis is that
the iSt has basically come to terms
politically with the Kremlin Stalinists.
The document cites WV's article
“Reagan. Begin & Hitler" (WV No.
308. 25 June 1982) in the effort toshow
that we haveabandoned the Trotskyist

program of political revolution in the
deformed workers states. Look, says
the ETs Wolfgang, pointing to this
article, the filthy Robertsonitc iSt is
reduced to pathetically offering advice
to the Bre/hnevites! Here is what the
ET document says:

“In the place of a political fight against
Stalinism there arc radical phrases
and advice to the Kremlin starting
with the idea ‘if we are in power'. In the
article ‘Reagan, Begin. Hitler’ ( Work-
ers Vanguard 308) there is a whole
catalogue of hints for Brezhnev: to
'clean up Afghanistan’, to threaten
Reagan with the bombing of the
centres of the American bourgeoisie,
and to reduce differences with China.
The pretended hard stance of Brezh-
nev against U.S. imperialism meets
the approval of the iST combined with
a lip-service position that the bureauc-
racy is an obstacle to any effective
defense."

This is an egregious political fabrica-
tion. Our whole article is nothing but
an inductive development of the need
for proletarian political revolution
against the Stalinist bureaucracy. The
article presents some of the immediate
and obvious measures which must be
taken to defend the USSR against
imperialism’s global anti-Soviet war

drive, precisely in order to show that —
while the bureaucracy could perhaps
selectively institute one or another of
them — these measures taken together
require political revolution!

A few quotations from our article
should suffice to make this crystal
clear:

“What is the necessary response to the
insane American provocations? In the
first place, reach an understanding
with the Chinese. .. That's what
sensible defenders of Soviet interests,
not to mention proletarian interna-
tionalists. would do. But every single
one of these Stalinist bureaucracies is
nationalist to the core and refuses to
give up one sacred inch of the
motherland.

“Next, clean up Afghanistan In-

stead of capitulating to the mullah
reaction, by limiting land reform and
literacy campaigns, the Soviets should
be pouring the money in there on a
massive scale: land to the tiller and
cheap credit, health programs, etc.
But that means social revolution. .
And that docs not square with the
Kremlin’s policies of detente and 'two-
stage' revolution Reformism abroad,
by conciliating the forces of reaction,
undermines defense of the Soviet
Union.

“And the true facts of the situation

must be communicated to the Russian
people —

“But all this requires a high degree
of workers democracy, combining
toughness and generosity in defense of
the fundamental conquests of the
October Revolution And this cannot
be accomplished without a workers
political revolution to oust the Stalin-
ist bureaucrats who only dream of an
accommodation with the imperialist
West....

“What's needed to defend the land of
the Soviets against rapacious imperi-
alism hell-bent on a nuclear show-
down requires above all a rehirth oj
Leninism. As Leon Trotsky wrote in
the ‘Manifesto of the Fourth Interna-
tional on the Imperialist War and the
Proletarian World Revolution’ (May
1940): '.. Only the world revolution
can save the USSR for socialism But
the world revolution carries with it the
.inescapable blotting out of the Krem-
lin oligarchy’."

The quote from Trotsky is the article’s
conclusion; the whole article is nothing
but an argument for political revolu-
tion derived from the concrete imperi-
alist threats confronting the USSR
today and the means for combating
them.

Of course this does not prove that
the iSt is right, about Stalinism or
anything else. But it proves that the
ETs are wrong, in the most fundamen-
tal sense, because they are liars. And
this you can tell, from anywhere at all
on the planet.

WV Photo

ILWU Militant Caucus campaign tor boycott of South African ship last June
helped mobilize support for Stan Gow against bureaucratic purge attempt.

“External

Tendency”...

(continued front page ll)

politically confronted by indignant and
vocal SL supporters who called him a
scab. They never laid a finger on him. If
Ritchie and Wooly had wanted to get
physical with wimpy Bob Mandel. he
would have been on the ground and then
in an emergency ward.

Mandel is using a device often
employed to great effect by the FBI’s
poison-pen experts. If there had been a
fist-fight w ith Mandel, we would have a
defense. We would have eyewitnesses to
say that our friends engaged in an act of
self-defense, or, conversely, that a
couple of hotheaded supporters imper-
missibly took a swing at the worm
Mandel. But nobody believes eyewit-
nesses who say: nothing happened.

So there we were, not knowing what
to do about our eyewitnesses to the fact
that nothing happened, and realizing
that we weren’t about to offer to take
back into the party the instigators and
signers of a petition that might as well
have been written by the FBI.

But then Bob Mandel, after a month
of promising to surface his own eyewit-
ness. finally brought forth a buddy with
an account which itself shows that no

Spartacist 50c

Pamphlet

Make checks payable/mail to:
Spartacist Publishing Co..

Box 1377 GPO. New York, NY 10116

assault took place! Mandel’s witness
observed vehement shouting, and it
looked to him like Bob Mandel looked
scared. Mandel’s witness, one Joseph
Blum, wrote up his 9 January account at
Mandel’s request. Even so, the best he
can do to back up Mandel’s lying story is
to say that there was an argument
between Mandel and two men: the man
facing Mandel was “yelling very loudly”
in Mandel’s face, while the man stand-
ing "slightly behind" Mandel was giving
the first man “verbal if not physical
support.” In other words, Blum thinks
that maybe Mandel might have been hit
in the back. But now the Canadian ET
has been saying that Mandel was
elbowed in the stomach. How, by a man
standing behind him? This would of
course be a crucial discrepancy in court,
but of course the whole matter is a
fabrication.

Meanwhile, it seems that to know
Mandel is to disbelieve him. The
petition provocation is a spectacular
failure: after intensive work in three
countries (total population: about 350
million), the ETs have secured 15
signatures. We don’t doubt that other
variously motivated individuals will
present themselves to the ET now that
WVhas formally introduced them. But
apparently the number of ex-socialists
so swept up in guilty personalism and
outright anti-communist ver\omousness
as to take the word of Bob “I tied to the
party for years” Mandel seems to be
quite small.

Of course the ETers themselves have

shown that they know nobody strong-
armed Mandel at a Bay Area demon-
stration. Midwest-based ETers have
had no hesitation in mounting interven-
tions in our public class series at
Oberlin. Nor was the Toronto ET crew
afraid to turn up one afternoon at our
New York public office for a session of
our public class. Obviously they had no
fear that by sitting down amongst 20 or
so New York SL members and contacts
they were risking a stomping by frenzied
Stalinist goons.

Keeping this in mind, let us return to
the ET petition. The COINTELPRO
flavor is not restricted to the invention
of a physical incident to slander us as
goons, in the context of attempted
bourgeois repression against our party
and the corresponding reformist cam-
paign to portray us as violence-crazed.
The petition begins with a declaration
that Bob Mandel. Ursula and Howard
Keylor "are obviously not Nazi lovers.
anti-Semites, racists or finks." This
Hooverite device is sometimes called
“when did you stop beating your wife?"
Whereas the ETs have been very-
forward in their characterizations of us
as selling out to everything from Yuri
Andropov to black Marines, we have
been reserved and empirical in our
characterizations of them. We do point
out hew the ET’s union work consists of
applauding a redbaiter who backhand-
edly supports bureaucratic efforts to
purge our friends from the labor
movement. As for the rest of it, we have
not called the ETers "Nazi lovers" or

"anti-Semites" or “racists”— that’s their
choice of words. We have however been
aggressive in scandalizing the compo-
nents of the ET rotten bloc over a series
ol their positions and statements.

First there was their championship of
one Uli Sandler in Germany. Expelled
from the iSt’s German section in August
1982, Sandler’s whole political profile
was that of an early Nazi Brownshirt
There were fights with Sandler over
particulars, but the whole picture — his
disdain for colored immigrant workers,
his gross male chauvinism, his fondness
for skin-head punk rock and Nazi
memorabilia — wasn’t put together until
later when he was exposed for his
declaration that one German was worth
fifty Tamils. He was expelled; we called
him a proto-fascist. If the ETs were
smart, they would take us to task for
taking so long to get Sandler’s number.
Well, indeed, our German section,
drawn from a postwar generation which
mainly didn’t want to know what their
daddies did. was slow to see what they
had in Uli Sandler. A resurgent German
bourgeois nationalism is the mood in
the "new Germany”; it shades over to
the social-democrats’ "left" tails. Our
section was a bit slow to catch the drift
(unlike the German ET, which seems to
be going with the flow wherever else
they may be headed).

Our German comrades expelled Uli
Sandler and then kept him out of a
forum. Thus we gave the ET its first
cause celebre. They howled. “The
slander hurled at Uli Sandler is the most
egregious departure from workers
democracy by any section of the iSt to
date." The German ET ran a petition
campaign protesting the violated hu-
man rights ol a proto-Nazi kept out of a

Spartacist League Forum

Women's Liberation
Through

Socialist Revolution

Bolshevik Revolution and
Prospects for Revolution Today
Speaker Diana Coleman

SL Central Committee.

Former Spartacist candidate
tor SF Bd of Supervisors

Thursday, March 8, 7:00 p.m.

145 Dwinelle
UC Berkeley

For more information call (415) 835-1535

BERKELEY

12

WORKERS VANGUARD

Spartacist forum. But somehow the ET
hasn’t lifted a finger to protest hundreds
of exclusions of us from fake-left
meetings in the U.S. and elsewhere. The
SL has been slandered as violent cra/ies
and sinister Soviet surrogates by reac-
tionary bourgeois forces; we’ve been
treated repetitively to the “left” reflec-
tions of this bourgeois witchhunt. The
ET doesn’t bother with crocodile tears
when the reformists call us FBI agents
and violent disrupters to justify exclud-
ing us from “public" meetings and rad-
lib demonstrations: the ET is too busy
bleeding for a proto-fascist.

We didn’t call the ET “Na/i lovers” —
we just made them eat the consequences
of embracing every expellee as one of
nature’s noblemen. We quoted back at
them their pathetic delenses of Sandler
(it’s just a fireman's helmet he wears,
and anyway he never wore it in public;
he only sings “Deutschland fiber Alles"
in the shower). If it’s a fireman's helmet,
we said, why not wear it on the streets?
Could it be because it’s illegal in
Germany to sport the swastika in
public? (Sandler's steel helmet, com-
plete with swastika and eagle, is most
probably a World War II Wehrmacht
flak helmet.) Of late the ET seems to
have become rather reticent on the Uli
question. Have they finally recognised
what he is and decided they don’t really
like it that much? What about it.
comrades of the ET?Tell us: are you still
defending Uli Sandler? If so we want to
hear your defense. And if not, we want
to see a groveling apology.

And we know what Ursula’s upset
about too. An SI. comrade wrote up an
account of this conversation with
Ursula:

"[Ursula] said that she thought people
made too big a thing of what had
happened to the Jews during WW II I
was stunned I asked [her] what she
meant by that. She said that many
Social Democrats, trade unionists and
even Catholics were put in concentra-
tion camps, but all people seemed to
have heard of were the fate of the Jews."

Indeed the German social-democrats
were persecuted by Hitler if they made
themselves obnoxious. They remained
part of the German nation and their
sons went into the Wehrmacht. Those
who persisted in oppositional activities
were sometimes locked up; nothing
happened to the rest. The Jews were
exterminated. Systematically. Genocide.

We have not attributed motives to
Ursula in making those remarks. We
doubt she meant to mimic apologists for
genocide; we imagine merely that she
was seeing fascism through the eyes of a
German social-democrat. (Whereas we
are America’s hard communists, and,
like the black people in this country, we
think we’d get what Hitler gave the
Jews.) We aren’t calling the ETs
“racists” either — no, comrades, we just
think that you don’t give a shit about the
black people, because you have other
fish to fry.

And let’s be clear about this
COINTELPRO-style petition. You
don’t have to be an FBI agent to serve
the Big Lie campaign that serves the
witchhunters. An FBI agent couldn’t
have written the petition any better, as
we have shown. But yours is doubtless
another purpose — to seek to destroy us
in sheer subjective malice, of course, and
behind that, shaped by the climate of
bourgeois society in this pre-war period,
to ingratiate yourselves with those who
shade over into the Democratic Party,
to show' yourselves the sort of people
with whom the bureaucrats can do
business, as opposed to the “violent"
and “crazy" Spartacist League.

As wc go to press, we have received
from the Canadian E I s. who seem not
to have signed their bloc partners’
petition, a letter stating their intention
to seek reintegration into the iSt as a
tendency. For those who will agree to
struggle against the leadership of the iSt
on the basis of Leninist democracy and
discipline, eschewing collaboration with
those who have shown their appetite to
destroy us by any means, our door is still
open. ■

Labor...

(continued front page / )
felt no fear.

The killing of strikers is becoming
routine practice. Today no company
feels like they’ve gotten satisfaction with
a mere 15 percent wage cut — they've got
to have a dead striker as a scalp to wave
around. Ray Phillips, a Greyhound
driver in Ohio run down by a scab
“trainee" in December. A few weeks
later, Greg Goobic, a young Union Oil
striker killed by a scab driving an 18-
whcelcr through a picket line at a
Rodeo, California refinery. This is
murder as company policy. And it must
be stopped!' It won’t be stopped by the
cops and courts — they’re on the other
side, the guardians of the capitalists’
"law and order." Potential strikebreak-
ers should be educated to understand
that you can’t cross a picket line on two
broken legs, and county hospitals are
rotten places. The next time a scab even
thinks about, or is coaxed by his bosses
to run down a striker, he should go pale
with fear. Then we can talk about
w inning some battles for a change.

The misleaders of American labor are
literally letting the bosses get away with
murder. Why? Charles Craypo. a
professor of industrial relations at
Cornell, put his finger on it. As the
Greyhound strike was going under he
remarked that union leaders "are careful
to stay within legal boundaries, and if
you stay within legal boundaries, there
is not a whole lot you can do" ( New
York Times , 7 December 1983). Damn
right, there isn’t! The Greyhound union
leaders even voluntarily limited the
number of pickets, guaranteeing that
the scab buses would roll, so they
couldn’t be accused of "breaking the
law." And when the Auto Workers
scabbed on Greyhound strikers in
Detroit, the excuse was that they were
"upholding the contract.” Solidarity is
not sending $500 and a valentine.
Solidarity is respecting picket lines, it is
secondary boycotts. hot-cargoing
struck products. “But that’s illegal," the
bureaucrats whine. So maybe some
labor leaders go to jail six months after
they surround the terminals with thou-
sands of pickets and call a solidarity
strike and the battle is won. Throughout
most of the history of this country there
have always been numerous labor men
in prison, as a necessary cost of
maintaining some kind of social equilib-
rium on behalf of the workers. But
today the union leaders are taking
casualties lying down, for nothing.

The future of the unions is on the line.
And while the capitalists are grabbing

every gun in their closet, the union
bureaucracy is handcuffing the workers
with the bosses’ laws. They’re blunting
our weapons. The bureaucrats invented
the “informational picket line.” Wc say,
along with every miner and self-
respecting trade unionist, "Picket lines
mean you belter not try to cross r When
PATCO strikers were in chains, the
AFL-CIO's response was to call an

WV Photo

Militant black auto workers walk out
against Fraser's sellout contract at
Detroit's Jefferson Avenue plant, 16
September 1982.

impotent consumer boycott. The Spar-
tacist League said: “Shut Down the
Airports!" Machinists and Teamsters
had the power to bring the country to a
halt — they just had to say the word, the
ranks were ready. Over Greyhound we
said: “Stop the Buses! For a National
Transport Strike!" Again the labor
traitors called for a consumer boycott to
hide their refusal to fight.

The bureaucrats are allowing the
bosses and their state to hack up the
unions not only by their cowardly
legalism but also and no less important-
ly by their racism. It was not just the
militant and " illegal " tactics like the sit-
down strike and mass picketing which
built the industrial unions in the 1930s.

The great CIO organizing drives in auto,
steel, meat packing, maritime and other
industries broke down the traditional
Jim Crow system as black workers took
their place as rock-solid union militants.
In the 1930s- 1 940s the black ghetto
masses identified with the labor move-
ment But today what black man docs
not sec in a Lane Kirkland or a Doug
Fraser a defender of the racist status
quo? To organize the open-shop South,
for example, will mean pitched battles
with the Ku Klux Klan and cracker
sheriffs. Can anyone imagine the AFL-
CIO tops involved in, much less leading,
this kind of fight? In white racist
America the fate of organized labor and
the oppressed black masses is closely
bound together. The bureaucracy’s
accommodation to the racist status quo
set the stage for the union-busting
offensive of the Reagan years And there
will be no effective defense against this
union-busting unless the labor move-
ment becomes a powerful champion of
black rights. Reagan’s shock troops for
his war on unions, blacks and other
minorities are the fascist KKK and
Nazis. The SL strategy of mass labor/
black mobilizations to stop the
fascists — powerfully displayed in action
when the Klan was stopped in Washing-
ton, D.C. on November 27. 1982 by
5.000 black and other working people
under our leadership — heralds the kind
of fighting, class-struggle labor move-
ment and revolutionary workers party
this country needs.

Labor's Gotta Play
Hardball to Win

No decisive gain of labor was e\er
won in a courtroom or by an act of
Congress. Everything the workers
movement has won of value has been
achieved by mobilizing the ranks of
labor in hard-fought struggle, on the
picket lines, in plant occupations. What
counts is power. The strength of the
unions lies in their numbers, their
militancy, their organization and disci-
pline and their relation to the decisive
means of production in modern capital-
ist society. The bosses are winning
because the power of labor, its strength
to decisively cripple the enemy, has not
been brought to bear. So how do you
fight to win? After the recent string of
unmitigated disasters, thousands of
union militants must be asking them-
selves this question. We do not advocate
the practice of the McNamara brothers,
the early Iron Workers organizers who
until they were sent away for dynamit-
ing the Los Angeles Times building in
1910 (thanks to Clarence Darrow
pleading them “guilty") were some of

continued on page 14

Cops assault
Greyhound strikers
(top right). At left:
memorial march by
California oil workers
for labor martyr
Gregory Goobic run
down by scab truck.
Goobic's body lies
beside police car
(lower right).

£ Hardy /SF Examiner

2 MARCH 1984

13

Labor...

(continued from page 13)

the most successful labor organizers the
country had ever seen. The key is
mobilizing militant mass action in a
thought-out way, one which minimizes
the damage in terms of jail sentences and
other casualties.

Take the Union Oil strikers in Rodeo,
California where Gregory Goobic was
killed. Refineries are generally located
out in the boondocks and the companies
are tight with the highway patrol, so
take a look at how the miners take care
of business in similar situations. Back in
1977 striking coal miners in Stearns,
Kentucky were faced with a squad of
gun thugs who began throwing lead
from their steel-reinforced bunker. The
strikers put up a sign — “Warning: The
Stearns Miners Have Determined That
Scabbing Is Dangerous to Your
Health" — and responded in kind. Some
cowardly company guards complained
that one night they were disarmed by
miners, given a tour of the county and
dropped off minus their pants. Later
when state police attempted to herd
scabs into the struck mines, the entire
force of strikers showed up to face them
down. Even though scores of United
Mine Workers (UMWA) men were
arrested and the Stearns strike
defeated — because it was criminally
isolated by the UMWA leaders — their
militancy set the stage for the historic
1 10-day coal strike in 1978.

Phone installations, unlike oil refiner-
ies or coal mines, are generally located
in urban centers. Highly technologically
advanced, the system can be run for
weeks, perhaps months, with only
supervisory personnel. And there has
never been a successful telephone strike
in this country The Communications
Workers (CWA) started out as a
company union and then hooked up
with the CIA (via its AIFLD “labor"
front). How do you win in phone? In
February 1981 the telephone union in
British Columbia, Canada showed how:
instead of marching out they occupied
every major BC Tel installation around
the clock. They held the property
hostage while the company ran to the
courts. During last summer’s nation-
wide telephone strike we put forward a
strategy to bring the arrogant, parasitic
and widely hated monopoly to its knees:
hundreds of thousands of phone work-
ers occupying the buildings, rallying
unionists throughout the country, and
"with a flick of the switch, phone
workers could win millions of allies
among working people by providing
free phone service "

Or in New York City transit, which
has been run downhill for a couple of
decades. In 1966 the newly elected
liberal mayor John Lindsay arrogantly
tried to humiliate the Transit Workers
and got his head handed to him instead.
When TWU leader Mike Quill was
arrested for defying a back-to-work
injunction, he replied:

"li is about time that someone,
somewhere along the road, ceases to be
respectable Many generations of great
Americans before us have taken this
road, and il they didn't take this road,
half of you would be on home relief.
The judge can drop dead in his black
robes, and we would not call off the
strike."

Quill went to jail and died shortly
thereafter of a heart attack. But they
couldn't arrest 40,000 transit workers.
As the strike wore on, the bosses were
reminded that they couldn't run the
center of American world finance
capital without the subways and buses.
T ransit workers got their best settlement
in years, and for a few years afterward
transit was the best job in town.

For American labor today, a damn
good slogan is: It’s better to fight on
your feet than die on your knees. To be
sure, many strikes will be lost, even if
they are hard fought, as at Stearns or the
1937 Little Steel strike. But when an
important strike is won. it dramatically
alters the entire situation, as in the

Minneapolis. Toledo and San Francisco
general strikes of 1934 — all led by reds,
which set the stage for the rise of the
CIO — and the 1937 Flint sit-down
strike.

Smash Taft Hartley— For
Secondary Boycotts!

Labor's weapons are inherent in its
collective organization: the picket line,
solidarity strike, secondary boycott.
The capitalists’ arsenal is their state:
courts, cops and ultimately the army.
The unions must be independent of the
bosses’ state! But the "lieutenants of the
capitalist class" inside the labor move-

ment weaken the capacity for union
struggle by supporting corporatist laws
to undermine that independence.

Take the matter of elementary labor
solidarity, for instance. Every decent
unionist has the reflex to refuse to
handle struck goods, to “hot cargo."
There is a long tradition of use of this
basic trade-union tactic during the
militant period of the rise of the CIO
and industrial unionism. In the battle
that smashed the open shop at Ford in
1941, the car haulers refused to trans-
port scab autos. One of the reasons for
the Kennedys’ vendetta against Jimmy
Hoffa was his use of the “hot cargo"
technique — a tactic Hoffa said he
learned from the T rotskyists who led the
Minneapolis Teamsters strike.

But "secondary boycotts" are “ille-
gal," say the union tops from coast to
coast. Unions themselves were once
branded as “illegal criminal conspira-
cies." The entire history of the American
labor movement is one long string of
laws broken and court injunctions
defied. Otherwise there would be no
labor movement. And how did "hot
cargoing’’ become illegal? The “secon-
dary boycott" was banned by the Taft-
Hartley Act in 1947 This was linked to a
ban on Communists holding union
office, a key part of the Cold War
witchhunt. Communist-led unions were
barred from going to the NLRB,
supposedly more sympathetic to labor
than the regular courts, and could not
have Labor Department-supervised
union elections.

These corporatist laws and institu-
tions were supported by the bureaucrats
and reformists in the labor movement.
Today the labor reformists continue to
look to the state claiming it can be
“reformed" in the workers’ interest. At
the same time they use the state as an
excuse to refuse to struggle in the
interests of the unions. At bottom, they
do not want to struggle and see in the
bosses’ state a willing "partner."

These corporatist laws integrating the
unions into the state are also closely
linked to the question of the dues
checkoff. If you are going to wage a
militant strike, then a system whereby
the company acts as banker for the
union by collecting the dues money is a

liability. In the middle of the strike,
when you need it most you will see your
lunds cut off. ('I he NYC transit workers
union had its dues checkoff removed for
over a year as punishment for their 1980
strike.)

I he cowardice of the labor tops has
certainly emboldened the anti-labor
offensive to pass even more reactionary
laws. Kirkland & Co. squeal like stuck
pigs over legislation such as the recent
ruling allowing companies to rip up
union contracts when they become
“burdensome."

But there is an explosive potential
here as every union weapon becomes

"illegal" and the bureaucrats rely even
more heavily on the state. It means that
nearly any hard fought struggle will
throw the ranks of labor up against the
state as well as the labor bureaucracy.
Consider the elementary tactic of the
secondary boycott in this context
Under Reagan, a solidarity strike in
support of PATCO would certainly
have been a confrontation with the
state. If the Machinists had refused to
cross air controllers' picket lines and the
airports had been shut down, Reagan
might even have had to bring in the
armed forces. Militant labor struggle
could bring down Reagan the way the
Vietnamese Tet offensive sealed the fate
of Lyndon Johnson.

The bureaucrats understand that such
militant action would not only put the
working class on the offensive against
Taft-Hartley, it would spell the end of
their reactionary game in the labor
movement. Thus the desperate necessity
for labor to fight means a political
struggle against the union tops, for a
revolutionary leadership that will take
labor and its allies into a confrontation
with the state and win it, on the road to
winning a workers state.

As Leon Trotsky wrote in a document
that was found on his desk after he was
assassinated in Mexico in August 1940:
"In other words, the trade unions in the
present epoch cannot simply be the
organs of democracy as they were in the
epoch of free capitalism and they
cannot any longer remain politically
neutral, that is, limit themselves to
serving the daily needs of the working
class. They cannot any longer be
anarchistic, i.c.. ignore the decisive
influence of the state on the life of
people and classes. They can no longer
be reformist, because the objective
conditions leave no room for any
serious and lasting reforms. The trade
unions of our time can either serve as
secondary instruments of imperialist
capitalism for the subordination and
disciplining ol workers and for ob-
structing the revolution, or, on the
contrary, the trade unions can become
the instruments of the revolutionary
movement of the proletariat."

— L.D Trotsky. "Trade Unions
in the Epoch of Imperialist
Decay" ( 1940)

Il is no accident that the same Taft-
Hartley “slave labor" Act which out-
lawed the secondary boycott also

banned Communists from holding
union office. The present wretched,
legalistic and racist labor leadership is
very much the product of the anti-red
purge of the McCarthy era. Under
Meany/Reuther the AFL-CIO became
an instrument of Cold War fanaticism.
Indeed. George Meany and his errand
boy Lane Kirkland supported the
Vietnam War to the bitter end. even
after Nixon and Kissinger had given it
up as a lost cause. Today, whether it
comes to financing Solidarnosc, Polish
company union for the CIA and
bankers, or lobbying Congress for funds
for the MX first-strike missile or
Salvadoran death squads. Ronald
Reagan has no more fervent allies than
the AFL-CIO tops
The present union-busting offensive,
the attacks on blacks, the poor, the aged
are directly linked to the anti-Soviet war
drive. This government with bipartisan
support is literally taking food out of the
mouths of ghetto school children to
build nuclear missiles. Defense of the
Soviet Union — the social gains of the
Bolshevik Revolution despite subse-
quent Stalinist degeneration — is inte-
gral to defense against union-busting
and racist attacks on black people.

As this capitalist government be-
comes more and more directly involved
in union-busting as it mobilizes for war
against the Soviet Union, every major
workers' struggle becomes a political
fight requiring class-struggle leadership.
Labor militants must therefore link the
fight to oust the die-on-your-knees
union bureaucrats to building a revolu-
tionary workers party. Such a workers
party would fight for a workers govern-
ment to expropriate capitalism to end
once and for all the hideous social
system that turns the enormous indus-
trial wealth squeezed out of the life
blood of the working class into misery,
poverty and the spectre of nuclear
holocaust. ■

Lauren & Ray...

(continued from page 16)

of these militant unionists. Numerous
prominent individuals and over 20 local
unions are also supporting the defense
of Lauren and Ray. All out March I!
Down with South Africa-style "justice"!
Freedom and jobs back for Lauren and
Ray!

Alameda Central Labor
Council Resolution

WHEREAS:

During the CWA legally authorized
strike against the Bell System, that
commenced August 6. 1983. criminal
charges were filed in Alameda Coun-
ty. in the City of San Leandro, against
Daniel Nadeu, local 9495; Douglas E.
Snider, local 9496; Ray Palmiero.
local 9410; James Welsh, local 9415;
and Lauren Mozee. local 9415. and
WHEREAS:

Three employees lost their jobs as a
result of the criminal charges, and two
employees received a written warning
in their personnel files, and
WHEREAS:

These charges include both misde-
meanor and felonv charges, and
WHEREAS:

This is another example of the police
department siding with the business
interests at the expense of workers
rights, also known as union busting,
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED:
That the AFL-CIO Central Labor
Council in Alameda County go on
record asking the Alameda County
District Attorney’s Office to drop the
criminal charges against DANIEL
V. NADEU. RAY PALMIERO.
JAMES WELSH, DOUGLAS E.
SNIDER and LAUREN MOZEE.
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED
That a copy of this resolution be sent
to the District Attorney’s Office.

Class war on the streets of Minneapolis as T rotskyists lead victorious general
strike in 1934.

14

WORKERS VANGUARD

Kathy

Ikegami...

(continued from page 16)
means is I have refused lo be a
rubberstamp lor Imerzel's policies. This
union uses Roberts Rules of Order to
provide an orderly procedure to discuss,
debate and come to decisions. But
nowhere do any of these rules demand
decisions to be unanimous. And I’ll be
damned if I'll bend to his concept of
democracy and debate. His notions of
democracy have more in common with
the Salvadoran junta.

One of the charges alleges the
existence of an AP dispatch in which I
am supposed to have told the truth
about Imerzel. thereby bringing the
union into disrepute. Where is it? It was
never produced here by Imerzel because
it never existed.

Then there’s the famous MAC leaflet
from April of 1982 which triggered these
charges. First I want to say that we stand
by every word in that leaflet. Our leaflet
warned the members about layoffs,
exposed the leadership’s collaboration
with the company, and called for strike
action to stop layoffs, forced transfers
and downgrades while we still have jobs.
And Imerzel’s response? Like Nero who
fiddled while Rome burned. Imerzel has
been conducting this purge trial while
the company has been busy smashing
our union.

But the real reason I'm on trial is
because of my politics. Imerzel
“charges” me with being a supporter of
the Spartacist League. That's right and
everyone knows it. It's no slander,
Imerzel, it’s a badge of honor! What do I
stand for? I'm for building anti-fascist
demonstrations like November 27th in
Washington, D C. where I helped a
Spartacist League-initiated mobiliza-
tion organize 5,000 blacks and trade
unionists. We stopped the Klan from
marching. I stand for the independence
of labor from the capitalist Democrat
and Republican parties. Neither offer
any solutions for working people and
minorities. It’s the capitalists and their
government that have brought this
country to the brink of economic ruin
and war. I stand for building a workers
party based on the unions, throwing out
the capitalists and setting up a workers
government which will end racial
oppression, poverty, unemployment
and war. Then we can organize a
socialist planned economy based on
human need, not profit.

I have the right and responsibility to
say and organize for what I believe in. In
fact, I urge all members to interest
themselves in these questions and also
become supporters of the Spartacist
League. It is their right and my right as
U.S. citizens to hold these political
positions.

Imerzel, on the other hand, has a
different view of how I and all members
must think and act. What does Imerzel
stand for? This trial has shown that he
stands for purging from the union
anyone who wants to fight the phone
company. He’s for sucking up to the
company and turning our membership
over bound, gagged and powerless. He’s
for every company class-collabora-

tionist scheme, from QWL to factfind-
ing. that binds us to the bosses. He
accepts the company’s “right" to harass,
fire and lay us off He’s for funneling our
money and votes into the racist strike-
breaking Democratic Party. One of the
few good things that came out of this
trial is that everyone knows that Imerzel
coddles racist Klan lovers like Joe
McKenna Imerzel wants to force
unanimity to his world view. I'mcertain
most members including yourselves
would find this to be a horrifying
prospect!

Testimony in this trial has brought
out that Imerzel will lie. squander
thousands of dollars and years of our
union’s time, and indulge in his childish
Perry Mason fantasies in order to smash
any political opposition. Testimony has
shown that Imerzel has fingered me and
other MAC members to the company,
to the S.F. Red Squad, to the Secret
Service and to the FBI And when this
didn’t work, Imerzel and his bully
boys — Knipc. McKenna and Ander-
son— physically assaulted one lone
woman, MAC member Kat Burnham —
during the strike. Even some members
of Imerzel’s own Executive Board
couldn't stomach that cowardly act.

All that Imerzel has proved during his
“case” is that there arc no limits to how
far he will go to suppress opposition.
This would-be McCarthy reaches out
and endorses the infamous Moscow
purge trials of Josef Stalin, and then
accuses me of “totalitarianism.” Imerzel
applauds the thugs of the International-
ist Workers Party who launched a
murderous hammer attack on an L.A
phone worker This is a group whose
leader Nahuel Moreno is infamous on
the left for his history of lying and
swindling. No doubt the National
Union wondered what sort of lunatic
they’d unleashed as Imerzel cited his
rogues’ gallery list of “leftist experts”
against me.

Many of Imerzel’s witnesses provided
some amusing entertainment as they
fast-shuffled to keep from tripping over
their own lies, and then tripped over the
lies of others. The last session ended
with Linda Zupan trying to decide
which of her conflicting answers about
handing out the racist scab sheet
Malignant Action was the best one. To
give credit where it's due. I must thank
Miss Zupan for testifying that her
boyfriend McKenna was in fact arrested
on the same trip where McKenna
admitted attending a Ku Klux Klan
meeting. During the trial, this racist
compared going to Klan meetings with
going to church. McKenna also denied
saying that the black splicer, Dovard
Howard, crippled by a Klan terrorist
was shot by "an irate father." But
Imerzel confirmed the remark, calling it
a “joke.” No joke, brothers and sisters,
it’s racist filth pure and simple.

But Imerzel’s testimony crowns the
lot. After months of local pronounce-
ments of no danger from layoffs,
followed by claims he told the members
everything from the beginning. Imerzel
admitted here that his taped message to
the members was “not accurate." Trans-
lated from Imerzel’s language this
means he lied to the membership. But
we told the truth. That’s why I have been
on trial here for a year and a half.

It should be crystal clear that Imerzel
is the source of the friction. Over the last
six months, I have worked closely with
Marie Malliett. Frank Tanner, Barbara
Andrews, Margie Marks and Harold
Jackson — from the International
Union — on the Ray Palmiero and
Lauren Mozee defense case. Weccrtain-
ly don’t see eye to eye on many political
questions, but we’ve been able to work
together to defend this brother and
sister against the company.

The other good thing that came out of
this trial is that we helped ax Imerzel’s
chance to be District 9 Vice President.
While we have our differences with
Brother Ibsen, at least we can sit down
and deal with him reasonably. He’s not a
megalomaniac. Why is it that only
Imerzel is different? The only conclu-
sion I can come to is that Imerzel is a
man with no honor. He is a weak,
cowardly and sick man who needs help.
And I pity the poor International. What
will they do with this basket case? I think
our union ought to give Imerzel all the
medical care he needs.

This trial body has been put in an
impossible position. If you vote for
Imerzel what you are doing is banning
free speech and outlawing any criticism
that Imerzel doesn’t like. This would set
a dangerous precedent ol no opposition
in the union. Such a decision could very
well come back to be used against you
and this union in circumstances more
serious. The company is emboldened by
Imerzel’s lying and sniveling policies.
He is disarming the union at a time when
we must fight. This trial body will have
to live politically with its decision long
after Imerzel is gone.

Purging fighters from the union
cripples the union and encourages less
union-conscious members lo become
anti-union. It’s a policy of making
enemies of those who want to make our
union strong. It’s the militants who
build unions and win strikes. Imerzel is
playing right into the hands of Ma Bell
and her union-busting propaganda.

To continue this trial would be a
farce, subjecting me, the trial body and
the membership to further egotistical
abuse. We have to get on with what
should be the real business of this
union — defending our members against
the company, throwing out all the scabs
that slithered across our picket lines last
August, and defending the victims of
those scabs — like Ray and Lauren.

We were intending to call various
more witnesses to ask them brief
questions. But it is clear from Imerzel's
projected eight more trial sessions that
he is bent on makingsure this trial never
ends. During the prosecution’s case,
which took over a year, we had ample
time to raise our points. We for one will
not be responsible for squandering any
more of the local’s time and money.
Therefore, we intend to call no more
witnesses and rest our case.

1-18-84

Victory

Against

Moonies...

(continued from page 5)

I’ve put up the materials on the victory
in the union hall and spread the word
around our union.

What happened on November 27 was
very important, especially since it was
made possible by the endorsement and
support of more than 70 union locals
and union officials.

A local union official in the
Washington. D C. area

A Model of Intelligent
Self-Defense

The Spartacist League and the
Spartacus Youth League are to be
congratulated on their important victo-
ry in forcing the Washington Times to
retract its vicious libel alleging that SL
members and supporters fomented
violence at the November 27 anti-Klan
demonstration in Washington. D.C.
There is no doubt that this libel was part
of an effort by the Moonie Cult and
others to set up the SL for future
investigation and prosecution as a
“violence-prone” or “terrorist" organi-
zation. The vigorous response of the SL
threw a monkey wrench into these
plans. It should serve all those commit-
ted to radical change in the interests of
the w-orking class as a model of
intelligent self-defense. As a lawyer and
law professor. I am particularly im-
pressed by the SL’s understanding of
when to use the courts (against slander-
ers like Dcukmejian and the Moonies.
and against the F B.l.) and when not to
(theSL refuses to drag thejudiciary into
internal disputes within the labor
movement). Keep up the good work,
which serves the interests of all working
people!

Richard E. Rubenstein

Professor of Law.

Antioch School of Law. D.C.

Keep Up the Good Work

Alfonso Wells, President of West
Eight Mile Road Citizens District
Council, congratulates the SL on their
victory over the Moonies. We all should
praise such groups like yours who will
stand up and fight for the rights of those
who are not able to defend themselves,
both black and white. Again. I congrat-
ulate you. Keep up the good work.

Alfonso Wells
Endorser. Labor/ Black
Mobilization toStop the KKK
in Washington. D C.,
November 27

1*00 I

IHoivS&u'ion

Heeds

Black LeadershW^I I

Black History
„ and the
plass Struggle

"*1

*****

- . .

25C

$1-00 Make checks payable/mail to: $2.50

Spartacist Publishing Co., Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116

r

N

SPARTACIST LEAGUE/ U.S.

LOCAL DIRECTORY

National Office

Cleveland

New York

Box 1377, GPO

Box 91954

Box 444

New York. NY 10116

Cleveland. OH 44101

Canal Street Station

(212) 732-7860

(216) 621-5138

New York, NY 10013
(212) 267-1025

Ann Arbor

C/O SYL

Detroit

Norfolk

P O Box 8364

Box 32717

Box 1972. Mam P O

Ann Arbor, Ml 48107

Detroit, Ml 48232

Nortolk, VA 23501

Atlanta

(313) 961-1680

Oakland

Box 4012
Atlanta, GA 30302

Los Angeles

Box 29574

P O Box 32552
Oakland. CA 94604
(415) 835-1535

Boston

Los Feliz Station

San Francisco

Box 840, Central Station

Los Angeles. CA 90029

Box 5712

Cambridge. MA 02139

(213) 663-1216

San Francisco. CA 94101

(617) 492-3928

(415) 863-6963

Chicago

Madison

Washington, D.C.

Box 6441. Mam PO

c/o SYL

PO Box 75073

Chicago, IL 60680

Box 2074

Washington. D C 20013

(312) 427-0003

Madison, Wl 53701

(202) 636-3537

TROTSKYIST LEAGUE

Toronto

Box 7198, Station A

OF CANADA

Toronto, Ontario M5W 1X8
(416) 593-4138

v

2 MARCH 1984

15

WORKERS VANGUARD

Freedom and Jobs Back for Lauren and Ray!

Alameda Labor Council Backs Phone Strikers

On February 27 the Alameda
Central Labor Council of the AFL-
CIO added its backing to the defense
efforts on behalf of Lauren Mozeeand
Ray Palmiero, the two Bay Area
phone workers fating four years in
state prison for defending themselves
and their picket line from a racist scab
assault. This welcome albeit belated
support comes just three days before
the March I preliminary hearing on
the frame-up charges against the
couple.

The Central Labor Council motion

demands that the Alameda County
D.A. drop the charges against Lauren
and Ray, and against three other
phone workers who face misdemeanor
charges stemming from last summer’s
national phone strike. The Phone
Strikers Defense Committee, which is
organizing the defense campaign for
“freedom and jobs back for Lauren
and Ray,” has demanded that the
labor movement use its collective
strength to defend all phone workers
victimized as a result of the strike.

The PSDC has called for a demon-

stration March I at X a m. at the
Hayward Municipal Court prior to the
preliminary hearing. Committee
spokesmen expect a large turnout of
supporters to fill the courtroom
afterwards to show their determined
opposition to the conspiracy between
the vindictive phone company, cops
and DA. to railroad the labor
militants.

While on picket duty last August in
the racist suburb of San Leandro.
Lauren was called a "black nigger
bitch” and struck in the face by a racist

scab manager, one Michelle Rose
Hansen. Lauren defended herself, her
companion and fellow unionist Ray
came to her assistance. Now Lauren
and Ray are fired, denied unemploy-
ment compensation and are singled
out for the only felony charges the
PSDC is aware of stemming from the
strike. The racist scab, of course, still
has her job.

The Central Labor Council joins the
more than 200 labor officials w ho are
demanding an end to the persecution
con united on page 14

Throw Out the Witchhunt Verdict!

Phone Workers:

Defend Kathy Ikegami !

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SAN FRANCISCO— On February 10,
the longest-running witchhunt trial in
the history of the Communications
Workers of America ICWA) reached a
climax as the kangaroo court returned
its “verdict ” The target of this purge
attempt is Kathy Ikegami. a former
executive board member of CWA Local
9410. steward and nine-year member of
the union, and a leading spokesman of
the Militant Action Caucus (MAC), the
class-struggle opposition in the tele-
phone union After a year and a half of
phony deliberations the trial court,
hand-picked by Local 9410 president
Jim Imerzel. declared Ikegami guilty of
all charges, sentencing her to a six-
month suspension from the union and a
$300 fine. Imerzel and his co-
conspirators on the local executive
board lost no time in suspending
Ikegami. in direct violation of CWA
rules that specify that a member is
entitled to an appeal before their local
within 30 days before any sentence is
carried out.

Ikegami told WV. “Since the execu-
tive board is not complying with the trial
procedures by failing to call a member-
ship meeting, I am compelled to call a
special membership meeting, as man-
dated by our local bylaws in order to
give the members of Local 9410 the right
to hear my appeal and cast their vote
against this outrageous and unjust
conviction. It is also my right to be
heard and judged by my peers, the
members. To forbid the membership to
exercise this right places the union in a
position of jeopardy." A M AC-initiated
petition for a special meeting gathered
over 500 signatures, more than twice the
required number, in just one week

As we reported at the outset (see O V
No. 313. 17 September 19X2). this purge
trial was triggered by MAC’s exposure
of the CWA bureaucrats’ collusion with
the company in agreeing to mass layoffs,
forced transfers and downgrading and a
war of attrition against the membership
Since that time the company has cut
IX.000 jobs throughout California.

MAC members in Fast Bay 1 ocal 9415
told I'LL that phone workers are under a
virtual reign of terror there with
grueling forced overtime and stepped-
up management harassment, spyingand
victimizations. Ihe suspension of Ikega-
mi isan open invitation for the company
to fire her and an attempt to intimidate
and silence any opposition to the bu-
reaucrats’ no-fight agreement with the
company I he central charge on which
Ikegami was convicted, she told WV,
was “divid[ing| the leadership of this
Union and its Rank-and-File mem-
bers”! But it’s the Imerzel gang’s unity
with the company that divides them
from the membership.

As the MAC’s bulletin “Militant
Action” ( 15 February 19X4) underlines:
“Wc all know they’re going after Kathy
because ol her political views. Kathy is a
proud supporter of the labor/socialist
Sparlacist League. She stands for the
independence of labor from the capital-
isi Democratic and Republican parties.
She’s for building a workers party based
on the unions, to throw out the
capitalists and form a workers govern-
ment. She’s for ending the union’s
notorious ticstOtheCIA-AIFLD. She’s
for building anti-fascist demonstrations
like November 27th [ 19X2] in Washing-
ton. D.C where a Sparlacist League-
initiated mobilization organized 5.000
blacks and trade unionists who stopped
the Klan from marching. She’s lor
building a class-struggle union leader-
ship that doesn’t kneel before the
company.”

This is the kind of leadership and
program the CWA membership desper-
ately needs. And when CWA national
president Glenn Watts put out the word
at the 19X2 convention to “Stop M AC."
it’s because he is opposed to everything
Kathy Ikegami stands for! As the
“Militant Action” bulletin pointed out.
referring to the pro-Watts Imerzel gang
“These people should go to work for the
CIA-AIFI D. but then again, maybe
they already have."

Ikegami told II I' that in illegally
suspending her Irom the union Imerzel
and the local executive board charged
Kathy with having “utter and complete

Kathy Ikegami
(lower left) supports
Greyhound strikers at
San Francisco rally.

contempt for. and disregard of the
union membership and the policies and
procedures established by them.” This
from the very same people who are
trampling on the members’ rights and
the CWA’s own rules by suspending
Ikegami before her appeal to the local!
In total disregard for the will of the
membership Imerzel had earlier gerry-
mandered Ikegami off the executive
board, simply dropping her on the basis
that since divestiture her job is in a
different company than the one she was
elected from! Ikegami then ran for re-
election to the executive board on the
MAC slate Now to keep Ikegami off the
executive board and to deny the
membership even the democratic right
to elect its own leadership, the Imerzel
clique has demanded that the ballots be
destroyed uncounted. The bureaucrats
are trying to simply declare Ikegami
ineligible to run based on their own
illegal suspension of her (which took
place after the ballots were already out).
They have declared their own candidate

the winner by acclamation!

This rule-or-ruin policy of the Imerzel
gang is not new. Last year over 1.000
local members demanded the recall of
local officers Imerzel. Malliett. McKen-
na and Anderson for their harboring of
McKenna, who admitted attending a
KKK meeting, and for their disruption
of the local in their attempt to purge
Ikegami. The bureaucrats, elected by
only half the number of votes as the
signatures on the recall, simply threw
the petitions in the trash. Local 9410
members can and must squash the
verdict against Kathy Ikegami. As the
MAC wrote: "The trial court’s decision
bans free speech and outlaws any
criticism that Imerzel and his cronies
don’t like. If this conviction is carried
out it will set a dangerous precedent —
no dissent, no opposition will be
allowed in our union.”

We print below Kathy Ikegami’s
closing statement to the trial court,
taken from the January IX “Militant
Action” bulletin.

Militant Action” Bulletin

Ikegami to Imerzel:

Take Your Trial and Shove It!

From the beginning it’s been clear
that this is a political purge trial. Imerzel
brought these charges because I’m in the
Militant Action Caucus which is an
effective, organized, political opposi-
tion to the policies of the National and
local leadership. Imerzel has proven
that he is the disrupter. He has brought

the union into disrepute. This trial has
been an exercise in self indulgence for
one man’s sick ego

Let me quickly answer each charge.
I he first charge says I willfully violated
the by-laws by voting against steward
and committee appointments. What this
continued on page 15

2 MARCH 1984

16

WORKERS KAROO ARP .

No. 350 t«> *»»> 16 March 1984

U.S. Troops Head for Salvadoran Border

Military Victory to Salvadoran Leftist Rebels!
Crush CIA’s Contra Invaders of Nicaragua!

On March 8, NBC News announced
the U.S. is sendinga strike force of 2.000
combat troops of the 193rd Infantry
Brigade to the El Salvador-Honduras
border for "emergency readiness exer-
cises." This is no exercise! It is a direct
military intervention to try to save the
Salvador butchers who are getting the
hell kicked out of them by leftist
guerrilla rebels. Using the phony "elec-
tions" scheduled for March 25 as a
pretext. Reagan is trying to prop up the
foundering death squad government by
escalating the U.S. military threat. The
aircraft carrier America with a battle
fleet of destroyers and escort ships is

now steaming toward Honduras which
the U.S. has turned into a staging area
for Yankee invasion into Central
America.

Over the weekend fighting intensified
in various parts of Central America. In
El Salvador, government forces rushed
in to try to end eight hours of heavy
streetfighting by several hundred leftist
rebels in the town of Santiagode Maria
In Nicaragua, a Sandinista army com-
mander in the Matagalpa area reported
his forces had killed some 35 contras out
of a counterrevolutionary invasion
force of 1,400 that had penetrated deep
into the heart of the country. Mean-

while. Sandinista tanks were moved to
the northern frontier for the first time to
defend against heavy shelling reported
from around the Honduran border
town of El T riunfo. After two successive
U.S. "exercises" in Honduras, the
fighting in Central America is rapidly
becoming a regional war.

On March 1 3. the Sandinistas report-
ed that U.S. -backed contra terrorists
had blown out two major power
stations. The contras . however, are
going nowhere in their desperate at-
tempt to topple the government. The
contras' failures, like the failures of the
Salvadoran butchers, have increased the
danger of direct U.S. military interven-
tion. With the Sandinista tanks on the
Honduran-Nicaraguan border. Mana-
gua knows it is looking directly into the
guns of U.S. imperialism. On March 13.
Sandinista junta coordinator Daniel

Ortega appealed to “the governments of
the world to give the Nicaraguan people
the technical military means to defend
itself against the terrorism unleashed by
the U.S. government." Indeed the
Nicaraguans need direct international
aid. As we have said: “Stop Reagan's
Bay of Pigs — Nicaragua Needs MIGs!"
...and the most advanced surface-to-air
missiles and anything else they need to
defeat the bloody U.S. -backed contras.
But as the U.S. becomes more directly
involved in the war. it will take revolu-
tionary struggle throughout the isth-
mus. backed up by international prole-
tarian mobilizations, particularly in the
U.S., to defeat the imperialist invaders.

Not long ago Reagan and the State
Department were talking about the 55-
adviser limit on U.S. military personnel
in El Salvador. But now in Honduras
continued on page 9

Reagan's KAL 007 Plot Unravels

Ferreting Out the Truth

When a Soviet lighter pilot shot
down Korean Air I incs Flight 007 on
I September 1983. Ronald Reagan
made KA1. 007 the propaganda
centerpiece of the U.S. anti-Soviet
crusade. The world’s most dangerous
and barbaric leaders sharply escalated
their drive toward World War III in
the name of 200-plus innocent civilians

killed on the KAL airliner As the U.S
moved its nuclear first-strike missiles
into Europe. Congress condemned the
Soviet Union as perpetrators ol “cold-
blooded barbarous murder." From the
Moonie crazies and emigre "freedom
fighters" on t he streets to "responsible"
media like the New York Times, here
at last was the act which they said

proved Ronald Reagan's view of the
USSR as an “evil empire" which must
he destroyed. Alter all. they asked,
what kind of government kills inno-
cent civilians? What kind indeed.

KAI Flight 007 was clearly an
American Cold War provocation in
which civilians were held hostage by
the real perpetrators of "cold-blooded
barbarous murder." The U.S story
was fishy from the start, and we would
like to believe that we have done our
bit to expose the lies of the imperialist
plotters But now the Reagan story is

really unraveling. And that would be
an important blow to their campaign
to mobilize opinion for war against the
Soviet Union. For the Reaganites the
truth of Mission 007 is particularly
dangerous. And now additional pieces
of the puzzle are falling into place.

fhe first major breach in the U.S.
government’s story came in early
September when it was accidentally
revealed that a U.S. electronic spy
plane, the RC-135. had been in the
vicinity of KAL 007. Two former Air
continued on page 4

Mitterrand's Austerity Breeds Rightist Mobilization

Behind French Truckers Strike

ADAPTED FROM LE BOLCHfVIK
NO. 45. MARCH 1984

PARIS, March I— “We’ll make the
Parisians eat rats, then when they’ve got
no more gas and nothing to eat they’ll
see who’s in charge" ( Liberation , 22
February). So said an over-the-road
truck owner-operator who, along with
hundreds of others, was blockading the
Garonor freight hub on the auloroute
du Nord [main superhighway leading
into Paris from the north]. He was
repeating the battle cry of Versailles
against the heroic Communards of
1871. But today there is no revolution-
ary workers government in Paris, only
Mitterrand’s class-collaborationist gov-
ernment that has succeeded in sending
all sectors of the population into a furor.

The goal of the trucking bosses is to
expand their fleet. Their business
success depends on their ability to
eliminate the competition and on their
willingness to work harder and harder in
worse and worse conditions. This
contradiction was explicitly spelled out
in interviews with salaried drivers, often
forced by their bosses to participate in
the blockades yet conscious that the
“strike” demands such as easing limits
on the length of the working day were
not at all in their interests. Marxists
were against this “strike" — not because
it put Mitterrand up against the wall,
but because this mobilization was
objectively opposed to the working
class.

At the time, everyone was talking
about the “Chile syndrome," recalling
the Chilean independent truckers strike
that was one of the reactionary hammer
blows leading to the bonapartist mili-
tary coup d’etat which brought down
Allende’s popular front in 1973. While it

is true that things haven't yet gone that
far, nevertheless, in the context of
capitalist crisis and given the volatility
of the petty-bourgeois proprietors, this
“strike," manipulated by reactionaries,
could only become a fertile terrain for
far right-wing and fascist organizations.

What we have just seen with the long-
distance truckers is a continuation ol
the classic cycle produced by popular
front governments. Smashing workers
strikes, such as Talbot (see WV No. 346,
20 January), demoralizing the most
militant workers, conciliating reaction
with racist and anti-Soviet campaigns,
the Mitterrand government is provok-
ing an ongoing spiral of sinister mobili-
zations by the enraged petty bourgeoi-
sie. Students and shopkeepers last May.
Farmers sacking a county courthouse.
Wine growers sacking a town. And
repeatedly, for months, one mobiliza-

Bachelet/Parls Match

Right-wing truck owners strike ties
up France.

Bolshevism and Revolution
in the Colonial World

Trotsky polemicized against the
centrist Socialist Workers Party (SAP)
of Germany, which broke from social
democracy but continued to share many
of its prejudices, for its passive and
pacifistic attitude toward social revolu-
tion in the colonial world.

What characterizes Bolshevism on the national question is that in its attitude
toward oppressed nations, even the most backward, it considers them not only the
object but also the subject of politics. Bolshevism does not confine itself to
recognizing their “right" to self-determination and to parliamentary protests against
the trampling upon of this right. Bolshevism penetrates into the midst of the
oppressed nations; it raises them up against their oppressors; it ties up their struggle
with the struggle of the proletariat in capitalist countries; it instructs the oppressed
Chinese, Hindus, or Arabs in the art of insurrection and it assumes full responsibility
for this work in the face of civilized executioners. Here only does Bolshevism begin,
that is, revolutionary Marxism in action. Everything that does not step over this
boundary remains centrism.

— Leon Trotsky, What Next? ( 1932)

TROTSKY

WORKERS VANGUARD

Marxist Working-Class Biweekly ol the Spartacist League ot the U.S.

EDITOR Jan Norden

PRODUCTION MANAGER Noah Wilner

CIRCULATION MANAGER Darlene Kamiura

EDITORIAL BOARD Jon Brule, Charles Burroughs, George Foster, Liz Gordon, James Robertson,
Reuben Samuels, Joseph Seymour, Marjorie Stamberg (Closing editor tor No 350 Liz Gordon)

Workers Vanguard (USPS 098-770) published biweekly skipping an issue in Augusl and a week in Oecember, by
the Sparlaclst Publishing Co . 41 Warren Street. New York, NY 10007 Telephone 732-7062 (Editorial), 732-7861
(Business) Address all correspondence to Box 1377 GPO New York, NY 101 16 Domestic subscriptions S5 00/24
issues Second-class postage paid at New York, NY POSTMASTER Send address changes to Workers Vanguard.
Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116

Opinions expressed in signed articles or /errors do nor necessarily express r ho editorial viewpoint

No. 350 16 March 1984

tion after another of fanatical Catholic
school supporters: "If they take our
school away, then they’ll take our
money and our land." There was also
the threatening assault on the Elysee
palace [the French White House] by the
cops in June. All this stirred up by the
most reactionary elements of the bour-
geois opposition, including the fascists.
Le Pen [head of the fascist New Forces
Party] the torturer is promoted to the
rank of “respectable" politician. But
who lends “respectability" to his pro-
gram of anti-Communist race hatred?
The day following Le Pen’s TV broad-
cast (which provoked a rash of new
members for his organization of thugs),
the Mitterrand government one-upped
this racist scum by organizing an SS-
style raid on I lot Chalons[an immigrant
ghetto in Paris]: 600 Africans and
Algerians rounded up.

To break this infernal spiral and
stop the threat of bonapartist reaction,
we need powerful proletarian mobil-
izations against the government-
implemented capitalist austerity.
Breaking with Mitterrand is today a
simple matter of self-preservation! The
immigrant workers’ struggle at Talbot
could have been the spark to set aflame
the entire auto industry, bringing out
solidarity strikes in related industries
such as steel and transport. Talbot was
defeated, but in struggle — thus laying
the basis for future actions, for example
now in Citroen or Renault which are
threatened with thousands of layoffs.

And today it’s the miners’ turn. How
obscene to talk of "industrial restructur-
ing" when what [finance minister]
Delors & Co. mean is to dump experi-
enced and skilled workers proud of their
continued on page 10

Beatifying Souls for the
Cold War Crusade

TRANSLATED FROM LE BOLCHfVIK
NO. 45. MARCH 1984

Wojtyla is the pope of Reagan and
Mitterrand’s anti-Soviet crusade. He
says so and he proves it. He has
supported, organized and financed
Solidarnosc, the counterrevolution-
ary “trade union" that wanted to
bring Poland back home to capitalist
paradise. He supports the Nicara-
guan bishops who oppose the draft,
in order to sabotage defense of the
revolution against attack by the
contras in the pay of the CIA. He’s
against abortion, contraception,
sexual pleasure. And in his antipro-
gressive rage, he now attacks the
French Revolution by beatifying the
“martyrs” executed at Angers in 1 794
after the revolutionary troops had
smashed the “Catholic and royal
army,” in other words the monarchist
peasant revolt in the Vendee.

We’re not surprised to see this
rabid anti-Communist defend the
monarchists of 1794 after having
shed tears for those of 1984, the
Afghan “freedom fighters" who
likewise fight to defend their feudal
interests and their priests (even if they
are mullahs, heretical Muslims; when
fighting atheistic communism, sib-
ling rivalries are unseemly) against
the Red Army, the local incarnation
of the devil (social progress).

In fact this is all quite logical. The
commanding general of the holy
Roman Catholic church detests the
French Revolution as did all his
miserable predecessors. But now.
with the Cold War, numerous anti-
Communist liberals (like this other
Solidarnosc notable. Wajda, in his
film Damon [see Le Bolchevik No.
39, May 1983]) have set out to
denigrate the great revolution, the
democratic, antifeudal, anticlerical
bourgeois revolution. So much for
the erstwhile “leftists" who explain,
Jesuitism rampant, that it is neces-
sary to slay Wojtyla’s clericalism in
France but support it in Poland; who
are fiercely against “free schools" in
Nantes while fiercely for “free trade
unions" in Gdansk!

In its struggle to the death against
the workers state born of the October
Revolution, against proletarian
gains, rotting imperialism must
mobilize the most repulsive reaction-
aries. the most backward supersti-
tions, all the stinking garbage of the
old world, and vilify all the victories
of the progressive classes over the
worm-eaten old regimes. But we
revolutionists know that ours is the
cause of progress for humanity.

Long live the French Revolution!
Long live the Commune! Long live
the October Revolution!

We’ll seize the factories and wreck
Sacre Coeur! "Ah! Co ira!"

Letter

The ETs Didn’t Ring Twice

29 February 1984

To the Editor:

As a matter of elementary prophy-
laxis I wanted to prevent further
distortion in future by the ETs in
reference to a very minor point
in the article concerning them in WV
No. 349 [“The ‘External Tendency’:
From Cream Puffs to Food Poison-
ing," 2 March],

The article correctly reports that,
after my expulsion from the internation-
al Spartacist tendency, I received an
initial phone call from the ETs. all eager
to commiserate, who were quite taken
aback when I told them that my

expulsion had been fully justified. The
article however says that I “never heard
from the ET again." Indeed, I did
eventually receive documents from
them, but only after a lapse of some
months — it evidently took them some
time to bring themselves to expend
postage on anyone loyal to the iSt The
promised visits never materialized,
despite their repeated trips to New
York, and I had the dubious pleasure of
conversing with the ETs only when I
sought them out at the SL national
conference.

Again an iSt member

and proud of it

2

WORKERS VANGUARD

Black Minister Target of Boston Cop Vendetta

Hands Off Reverend Ellis-Hagler!

BOSTON — for the “crime" of defend-
ing the picket lines of striking Grey-
hound workers, black community activ-
ist Rev. Graylan Ellis-Hagler is being
targeted in an outrageous racist frame-
up Ellis-Hagler was one of nearly 90
picketers arrested last November while
trying to stop scab buses at the down-
town Boston Greyhound station.
Charges were subsequently dropped
against all the protesters except the
black minister, whom the cops have
singled out to face prison on patently
phony charges of assault and battery of
a policeman. Ellis-Hagler told WV that
the cop "called me ‘nigger’ and said, ‘I'll
take your head off'."

The cops are out to get Ellis-Hagler!
They hate him for his opposition to the
corrupt Police Commissioner Josgph
Jordan and for his active involvement in
opposing racist cop brutality. And they
want to send a message to minorities
and the working class of Boston: in this
segregated, heavily non-union city,
integrated labor struggle will not be
tolerated; scabs will do their dirty work
without fear while unionists and their
supporters will be jailed. Ellis-Hagler
told us that he’s being singled out
because“For one thing, I got involved in
union work. And union work in this
town means crossing over neighbor-
hood borders that black people are not
supposed to cross.” Hands off Graylan
Ellis-Hagler! Drop the charges!

Rev. Ellis-Hagler is well known in
Boston for his community and labor-
support work. Having been asked by
Greyhound strikers to participate in
mass picketing on November 17, he
joined the line In an interview with WV,
Ellis-Hagler described what happened
that morning:

“We had made a decision that when I he
buses started to roll we would be silting
in front of them to stop them from
rolling. There were quite a lew people
out there. I'd guess about 400. picketing
both sides of the terminal. Word was
passed that there was to be no violence,
il the police wanted to arrest us. then
that's all they simply had to do, arrest
us. When the first bus began to roll
around 9:30. people began to sit down
in the street in front of it... [But]
instead of arresting anyone, the police
decided to kick, to punch, to club
people, and to pick them up and throw
them on the sidewalk down the street.
So it was a leapfrog sit-in all the way
down the street and around the corner,
because as soon as people got thrown
out of the way. they scrambled back and
sal down again I was grabbed by a
sergeant by the throal. He called me a
few names and threatened me. When I
asked him for his badge number, he
turned and ran down the street."

When a second scab bus pulled out of
the terminal over an hour later, picket-
ers again sat down in the street in front
of the bus. The cops moved in and this
time arrested 51 picketers, including
Ellis-Hagler. After he was detained for
three hours, the original charge leveled

SPARTACIST EDUCATIONALS

Wars and Revolutions

HISTORICAL MATERIALISM IN PRACTICE

From the Great French Revolution to the Paris Commune

World War I and the Russian Revolution

Germany 1919-1933: Revolution and Counterrevolution

New York City
April 14-15

Hotel George
Washington
Lexington & 23rd St.

Sat. 10 a.m.

Sun. 11 a.m.

Bay Area
April 28-29

UC Berkeley
Sat. 10 a.m.
105 North Gate

Sun. 11 a.m.
120 Lattlmer

Chicago
May 5-6

Blackstone Hotel
636 S. Michigan
Sat. 10 a.m.
French Room
Sun. 11 a.m.
Embassy Room

Registration fee is $10 ($5 for students and unemployed).
For more Information, call the SL/SYL local nearest you.

against Ellis-Hagler, disorderly con-
duct. was upped to assault and battery
of a police officer. At the arraignment,
the cop who had threatened Ellis-Hagler
read what the minister describes as "a
laundry list of injuries that I supposedly
inflicted on an officer, from a broken
kneecap to a broken leg and a whole list
of other things." Meanwhile, there has
been a virtual press blackout of the case,
with neither of Boston's two daily
newspapers printing a word about it.

The bitter battles over Boston busing
in 1974 spelled the defeat of efforts at
school integration throughout the
North. When white racist mobs ram-
paged through the streets, stoning
school buses and terrorizing minorities,
it was a hunting license for every kind of
racist pig. and an incitement to outright
murder for the racist thugs in blue. Now
a book has been published documenting
the police department’s cover-up of a
1975 killing of a young black Roxbury
man hy the police. The book. Deadly
Force , implicates then-Superintendent
Jordan in orchestrating the cover-up
and has sparked widespread criticism of
Jordan and his Boston P.D

Lately, the police department has
been beset with problems; one cop
accused of rape while on duty, another
charged with 29 cases of arson; Com-
missioner Jordan was involved in a hit-
and-run in New Hampshire, then ran off
to a ritzy Newport, Rhode Island
alcoholics rehab clinic to dry out just as
Deadly Force hit the bookstores. Calls
for Jordan's ouster have snowballed and
both the Boston Globe and the Herald
have run editorials urging him to resign.
But while the "ranks" of the cops may
not be fond of Jordan, still less do they
like “outsiders" criticizing "one of their
own." And Graylan Ellis-Hagler has
been in the forefront of the move to oust
Jordan

After years of unrelieved racist terror
for black people in Boston, one solid
anti-racist stand was made which even
the brutal cops couldn’t stop. On 16
October 1982 an angry, jeering crowd of
1.500 successfully stopped the Ku Klux
Klan from rallying in City Hall Plaza,
running the hooded race-terrorists out
of town. Not even a full-scale riot by
scores of motorcycle cops and mounted
police could disperse the protesters. The
cops put 12 demonstrators in the
hospital and injured dozens of others,
but the crowd was determined to — and
did — stop the fascist provocation. A S 10
million police brutality lawsuit, in which
Rev. Ellis-Hagler is one of the plaintiffs,
was subsequently filed and is now in the
pre-trial discovery process.

The anti-racist militants who
withstood the rampaging cops to stop
the KK.K deserve every penny they can
get! But “cleaning up” the Boston cops
by dumping Jordan, who's become an
embarrassment to those he serves, or by
a civilian review board to monitor
complaints against the police (a pro-
posal backed by Ellis-Hagler) is no
answer. The cops’ job is to enforce
capitalist "law and order" by violence
and intimidation against minorities and
working people. To combat racist cop
brutality will take mass labor/black
mobilizations — a fighting labor move-
ment committed to forging unity of the
working people through active struggle
for the rights of the most oppressed — on
the road to workers revolution.

The racist railroading of Rev.
Graylan Ellis-Hagler must be stopped!

WV Photo

Rev. Graylan Ellis-Hagler, targeted
for supporting Greyhound strikers
and protesting police brutality.

At stake in this important case are
defense of picket lines, the battle lines on
which strikes are won or lost, and
defense against racist attack. These
same issues are posed in the case of
militant California phone workers
Lauren Mozee and Ray Palmiero,
whose defense Ellis-Hagler has en-
dorsed. Lauren and Ray, an interracial
couple and members of a class-struggle
opposition group in their union, face
four years in prison on phony “assault"
charges, for defending themselves and
their picket line against gross racist
insult and violent attack by a racist
scab/manager during last summer’s
national phone strike.

Stop the racist anti-labor frame-ups!
Drop the charges against Rev. Ellis-
Hagler! Please send urgently needed
contributions to: Ellis-Hagler Defense
Fund, c/o Hotel and Restaurant Work-
ers Local 26, 58 Berkeley Street. Boston.
Mass. 021 16. ■

C "N

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Toronto, Ontario Phone (416) 593-4138

V /

16 MARCH 1984

3

Der Spiegel

The ultrasecret CIA/NSA spy station at Pine Gap, Australia. When Labor
government leader Gough Whltlam started asking questions about the base
in November 1 975, CIA sent threatening cable to its Australian counterparts,
ASIO, and Whltlam was suddenly dismissed In an unprecedented coup by
the Queen’s representative. Now Soviets report that “It was from Pine Gap
that the CIA watched the provocative intrusion of a South Korean plane into
Soviet airspace” (New Times. February 1984).

KAL 007 Plot...

(continued from page 1)

Force intelligence officers. T. Edward
Eskelson and Tom Bernard, further
undermined the government's story,
revealing the extensive detection capa-
bilities of the RC-135 and noting that
the plane would not simply leave the
scene, as Reagan asserted, because it is
always relieved by another RC-135.
They concluded:

"Because of these RC-135 capabilities
we believe that the entire sweep ol
events., was meticulously monitored
and analyzed instantaneously by U S
intelligence.

" . . the official U.S. version of events is
incomplete and misleading."

— Denver Post,

13 September 1983

Now anti-CIA muckraker David Wise
has reported on Cable News Network
(25 February) that the two former RC-
1 35 fliers were recently paid a visit by an
FBI agent sent by the ultrasecret
National Security Agency (NSA). The
men were warned that they had “techni-
cally violated U.S. espionage laws,"
thereby emphasizing the accuracy of
their account. Wise concluded correctly.
“Censorship only arouses the suspicion
that there’s more to the story." Indeed
there is.

Since last September a number of
reporters have pieced together the
available evidence to conclude that
KAL 007 was on an intricately
engineered U.S. spy mission in which
the 269 passengers would become
innocent victims. One lengthy piece by
R.W. Johnson in the prestigious British
Guardian (17 December 1983) sketches
a scenario in which KAL 007 was
assigned the task of penetrating Soviet
airspace as part of a surveillance mission
over the militarily sensitive Okhotsk Sea
region. “It is the U.S. which owes the
USSR an apology," Johnson con-
cluded. And many other reporters have
pointed up the innumerable contradic-
tions in the American story, which
depends on an incredible string of
"coincidences" and “accidents." Even
Playboy (March 1984) has joined the
controversy, in an article by Asa Baber
which raises some pointed questions:
“Why were we first told the plane was
OK and sitting safely on Sakhalin Is-
land when for many hours our Govern-
ment had known that it had been fired
on. had fallen in a 12-minute descent to
about 2000 feet and then had lost all
control and crashed into the sea?..
“Was the many-hour delay in getting
any news to the public connected with
our Government's need to know wheth-
er or not the Russians had already
obtained the black boxes from the
wreckage of K.A.L. 007?...

"How could a 747 encounter all the

problems that this one did? Wrong
coordinates on the computer? All radios
dead? Radar transponder dead9 Weath-
er radar dead? Visual and celestial
navigation unused? Cockpit blind to
warning shots and the presence of
waggling fighter aircraft fore and aft?
Coordination with RC-l35s a coinci-
dence, as well as significant changes in
fiight direction during those two and a
half hours that sent K.A.L. 007 over
some of the most classified territory in
the Soviet Union? Radio silence from
our own observers another coincidence?
Changes in K.A.L. 007’s altitude as
fighters closed in another coincidence?"

Piece by piece, the complex mosaic of
the American spy plot is being revealed,
but a few important pieces are still
missing.

NSA Spy in the Sky

During the height of the anti-Soviet
media hysteria last September, the*
Soviets tried to crack through the
Reaganite propaganda offensive with
the unusual step of revealing some of
their own military intelligence. In a
technically detailed TASS press release
(19 September 1983), the Soviet air
marshal Pyotr Kirsanov revealed that
the mysterious off-course flight of KAL
007 was “strictly synchronized" with the
passes of an American spy satellite
identified as “Ferret-D." This satellite
has a period of revolution around the
earth of 96 minutes. Kirsanov ex-
plained. and three passes made by the
satellite on I September provided three
stages of an intricate spy plan. On the

first pass, starting at 6:45 p.m. Moscow
time, “immediately before the intrusion
of Soviet airspace by the South Korean
plane,” the satellite "for about 12
minutes flew east of Kamchatka and the
Kuril Islands." Thus the “ferret” could
pick up the signals of Soviet radar in the
Kamchatka area in their normal work-
ing mode. Then at 8:30 p.m. Moscow
time, “i.e., precisely at the moment of
the intrusion of the trespasser plane into
Soviet airspace" at Kamchatka, the spy
satellite conveniently passed over the
area of Kamchatka on its second pass.
And the third pass of the "ferret”
satellite “coincided with absolute accu-
racy" with KAL 007’s penetration of
Soviet airspace over Sakhalin.

Kirsanov noted that the unscheduled
40-minute delay of KAL 007 in its
stopover at Anchorage, Alaska had
been calculated to synchronize the
planes’s flight path with that of the
"ferret" satellite. Interestingly, this last
point fit in with the discordant note
made by anti-Soviet commentator
Martin Abend, who to everyone’s
surprise announced on TV in September
that "he had information that the
relevant South Korean jumbo had been
the subject of last-minute technical
alteration in Alaska" and that the U.S.
and Reagan “bore direct responsibility
lor the deaths of 269 people" (Alexander
Cockburn, “Press Clips," Village Voice ,
20 September 1983).

The spy plan was a repeat of a well-
practiced American spy technique —
Soviet radar would be provoked into

switching on by a deliberate penetration
of Soviet airspace, and the reactions and
capabilities of the Soviet defense sys-
tems would be recorded by American
spy planes and satellites. James Barn-
ford, who revealed the workings of the
ultrasecret NSA (they actually tried to
retrieve and suppress unclassified docu-
ments used by Bamford in his book),
described how this works:

“For many years the NSA had been
•ferreting’ the Soviet borders with
aircraft jam-packed with the latest in
electronic and communications eaves-
dropping gear. Flying parallel to the
Russian border, the aircraft would pick
up the faint emissions of air defense
radar, ground communications, and
microwave signals Once captured, the
signals would be sent on to NSA for
analysis.

“It was an effective and efficient method
of collecting the needed intelligence.
But there was one major handicap: only
that radar which is activated can be
captured, and some of the most impor-
tant radar became activated only by a
border penetration. For this reason
pilots occasionally engaged in the
dangerous game of ‘fox and hounds';
they would fly directly toward the
border, setting off the radar, and then
pull away at the last minute. Once in a
while pilots would actually penetrate
Soviet airspace, intentionally or
unintentionally.”

— James Bamford. The Puzzle
Palace {m2)

Satellite technology enhanced the possi-
bilities of this spy technique. Bamford
reports, since it would enable the U.S. to
“eavesdrop on various defenses deep
within the nation’s interior." Thus was
born a new spy apparatus:

“Known as ferret satellites. theSIGINT
[Signals Intelligence] craft were origi-
nally developed during the late 1950s
primarily to supplement the lumbering
four-engine ferrets that prowled the
Soviet and Chinese borders — and occa-
sionally didn't return

"The satellite is apparently designed so
that, as it passes over its prepro-
grammed targets, it can capture the
various signals on tape and then, when
over friendly territory, like Australia,
transmit intelligence back down to an
earth station in highly compressed
bursts."

The advantage of using a civilian
airliner to provoke Soviet radar would
presumably be that it would not get shot
down, and if it did. the U.S. could
scream bloody murder. It would not be
unprecedented — an editor of Defense
Science admitted that KAL airliners
“regularly overfly Russian airspace to
gather military intelligence” (San Fran-
cisco Examiner, 4 September 1983).

The Missing “Ferret”

So was there an American “ferret”
satellite in orbit at the time of K A L 007’s
ill-fated fiight? Flere was a concrete
assertion made by the Soviets which
could be investigated to get to the
bottom of the story. But predictably the
American capitalist media showed their
true class colors by dropping the story
like a hot potato. The New York Times
editors, who already know or could
probably verify it by making a phone
call to one of - their friends in the
Pentagon, chose instead to bury it in the
inside pages without comment or
follow-up. Workers Vanguard does not
have the resources of the New York
Times, and we certainly don’t have any
friends at the Department of Defense,
but we do have access to the New York
Public Library. And what we found
there supports the Soviet story 100
percent.

After years of practice, the U.S. has
developed “ferrets” into a fine and
predictable art, whereby the “ferrets"
are launched as "piggyback” packages
on a larger spy satellite known as Big
Bird. According to an authoritative
book with an introduction by former
CIA deputy director Ray Clme:

"From 1972 . .subsatellites for elec-
tronic snooping have ridden exclusively
on the Big Bird family, two separate
ferrets sometimes being released in
orbit.”

— Colonel William V. Kennedy.
Intelligence Warfare ( 1983)

The Big Bird would provide photo-
reconnaissance of the area in question.

The flight of KAL
007 was “strictly
synchronized"
with the passes
of U.S. “ferret”
spy satellite
(TASS, 19
September
1983).

4

WORKERS VANGUARD

Let In Soviet Olympic Official!

The State Department on March 2
refused to allow Soviet Olympic official
Oleg N. Yermishkin into the country,
only hours before he was due to arrive in
Los Angeles to prepare for the summer
Olympic games. Yermishkin. who had
visited Los Angeles in November,
applied for a six-month visa February
10. This last-minute refusal by the State
Department upset the Olympic Organ-
izing Committee of Los Angeles, which
stated. “We are deeply troubled by the
timing of this denial, which appears to
be inefficient and unfair” (New York
Times , 3 March).

T he State Department’s action wasn’t
“inefficient” — it was a conscious prov-
ocation against the Soviet Union, the
latest in a series of of escalating vicious
and petty bureaucratic outrages. “Inter-
nal security” was the only official
explanation given, but one State De-
partment official said it was all part of
an “intricate game” between the KGB
and the FBI/CIA: “we sent a message to
the K.G.B. that we were in no mood to
let one of their guys in on the Olympics
ticket, once we knew who he was" ( New
York Times , 3 March). We haven’t the
faintest idea whether Yermishkin has

any connection to the KGB or not—
there’s certainly no reason to believe
State Department propaganda. But
considering that the FBI and CIA. not
to mention thousands of cops and the
LAPD’s racist paramilitary troops, will
be crawling all over the Olympics, and
that California right-wingers are al-
ready whipping up provocative anti-
Soviet hysteria, it would seem perfectly
reasonable for the USSR to try to
provide its athletes some protection and
security.

The Reagan administration, as part
of its war drive against the USSR, has in
effect declared “open season" on repre-
sentatives of the Soviet Union in this
country. Earlier, the State Department
prevented San Francisco-based TASS
correspondent Yuri Ustimenko from
attending an L.A. Olympics press
conference on December 7, while whole
sections of L.A. County (including
Disneyland!) remain off-limits for
Soviet diplomats, journalists and ath-
letes. More serious than this petty
bureaucratic harassment, however, is
the U.S. government’s provocative
attempts to undermine the principle that
the Soviet Union, like any other state.

has any right to diplomatic immunity
for its personnel abroad. This is in effect
the posture of war; as we noted in
“Teheran Embassy Revisited" ( WV No.
345, 6 January 1984): “...the barbarous
treatment of Soviet diplomatic person-
nel of late is an index of the Reagan
administration’s drive to smash Soviet
state power: e.g., ( I) the invasion of the
Soviet diplomatic retreat on Long
Island during the KAL 007 hysteria by a
mob led by the Moonie cult with the
connivance of local authorities; (2) the
outrageously illegal denial of landing
rights for Soviet foreign minister Gro-
myko, who was scheduled to address a
UN session; (3) thehumiliatingprisoner-
of-war treatment of Soviet embassy per-
sonnel on Grenada. ..wherein the So-
viet staff was held for hoursand searched
with their hands behind their heads.”
This latest visa refusal, though in
itself just one more small jab at the
Soviet Union, is yet another ominous
signal that this ruling class will not give
up its deadly, provocative search for
some incident to unleash its hysterical
war appetite. We demand: Down with
the anti-Soviet Olympic bans, provoca-
tions and travel restrictions!*

while the “ferret" would be separated
from Big Bird in orbit to go about its
business of picking up electronic intelli-
gence. But “ferrets” are short-lived spy
satellites sent up for a specific mission —
they reportedly have an endurance of
only 100 days (James F. Dunnigan,
How to Make War, 1983). The question
then becomes, was a Big Bird launched
within 100 days of the KAL 007
incident?

The answer is yes. In an article in
Aviation Week & Space Technology
just before 007’s fateful flight, this
unofficial mouthpiece of the U.S. Air
Force revealed that a Big Bird was
launched on 20 June 1983 as part of an
intensified search for Soviet radar:
"The radar is under construction near
the village of Abalakova. in south-
central Siberia. . .. The facility was not
discovered until mid-July because the
U.S.. for reasons of economy, has not
been making frequent, large area
searches using the USAF/Lockheed Big
Bird and KH-II reconnaissance
satellites.

"On June 20, a Big Bird satellite was
launched from Vandenberg AFB,
Calif., by a Titan 3D. . . Approximate-
ly three weeks later, analysts at the
Central Intelligence Agency’s National
Photographic Interpretation Center
spotted the new radar .

“The Abalakova radar appears to be
oriented outward but to the northeast
rather than south across the nearby
border with Mongolia. This would

S3

KMOG*

U.S. War Provocation

Young Sparlacus

Spartacist Pamphlet
Tells the Truth!

Make checks payable/mail to:
Spartacist Publishing Co.,

Box 1377 GPO. New York, NY 10116

enable it to detect Trident missiles
launched from submarines in the Bering
Sea or Gulf of Alaska.”

— A W&ST. 22 August 1983

What better way to test the capabilities
of the Abalakova radar than to send a
plane from the northeast — i.e., from
Alaska? Furthermore, the flight path of
such a plane would provide the added
bonanza of photographing the sensitive
Soviet military installations at Kam-
chatka and Sakhalin island. Enter KAL
007,

As if to emphasize the high priority
the U.S. attached to this. Aviation Week
revealed that the U.S. had also sent two
“film-drop" KH-9 satellites over the
Soviet Union in this period — one on
April 15 and another on July 31. As the
magazine itself noted, “KH-9 spacecraft
have more limited lifetimes [than Big
Bird] and are launched to photograph
only the highest-priority U.S. intelli-
gence targets in the Soviet Union and
other foreign areas” (A W&ST, 25 April
1983). Furthermore, the film-drop
satellites are no longer produced be-
cause of budgetary restraints. And in
fact, by January 1984 the U.S. had "only
two film-return reconnaissance space-
craft remaining in its inventory"

( AW&ST . 16 January 1984). They
really depleted their stock for this
mission. Similarly, the U.S. is running
out of Big Birds and KH-lls, so that
“until at least the middle of the decade
[ol the ’80s] an average annual launch of
just one reconnaissance satellite will be
possible" (Kennedy, op. tit.). The ines-
capable conclusion: something extreme-
ly important was being planned by U.S.
intelligence circles in this period.

Was there a "ferret” riding piggyback
on the Big Bird launched on 20 June
1983? The Pentagon won't say. of
course, but certainly the heightened
interest in Soviet radar in that period
would call for a “ferret” reconnaissance.
We checked the Telecommunication
Journal, a publication of the United
Nation’s International Telecommunica-
tions Union (ITU), which publishes a
delayed listing of satellite launchings.
No doubt the CIA/NSA launders the
list given to the ITU, but what was
published is revealing. On the June 20
launching. Big Bird is listed as “1983-60-
A." But also apparently there were two
other satellites in the same launching.
One is listed mysteriously as "No name"
and designated “1983-60-0." This im-
plies that there was a “1983-60-B,”
which is mysteriously not listed at all.

Lo and behold, the mysterious “No
name” satellite is described in the
“Observations” column as an "electron-
ic monitoring satellite" — i.e., a ferret!
Its inclination to the equator was 96.7
degrees, meaning it had a polar orbit
typical of a ferret reconnaissance over
the Soviet Union. This ferret is said to
have had a period of revolution of 1 1 1.3
minutes— somewhat longer than the 96
minutes mentioned by the Soviets,
implying a higher orbit, But since this is
only the "initial orbital data." it is
possible that the orbit could have
decayed over two months into the lower
orbit described by the Soviets. Or
perhaps the unlisted “B" satellite men-
tioned above was the culprit. In any
case, it's clear the Defense Department
has a lot of explaining to do. but so far
the bourgeois papers have not raised the
obvious questions.

“Coincidences"

This string of amazing “coincidences"
goes back years. Remember the
previous KAL airliner which was forced
down over the Soviet Union on 20 April
1978, after mysteriously going way off
course and Hying over the Murmansk
area and the Kola Peninsula? (Mur-
mansk is the location of a large Soviet
submarine base and headquarters of the
Soviet Northern Fleet.) One month
before that, a Big Bird was launched on
16 March 1978 by a Titan 3D rocket,
and aboard that Big Bird was most
probably a “ferret" spy satellite:

“A piggyback vehicle also was launched
by this Titan.... In the past, such
piggyback payloads have involved
ferret spacecraft."

—A W&ST. 3 April 1978

After the Korean plane was forced down
by Soviet fighters south of Murmansk,
the New York Times (22 April 1978)
raised some eerily familiar questions:
"Why was the plane in the Soviet
Union's airspace? The South Korean
Embassy in Helsinki was reported to
have blamed navigational errors, but a
Korean Air Lines navigator in Seoul
said that was unthinkable because the

plane was too far off course

"Why did the pilot evidently defy the
orders of Soviet interceptors to land
and instead take what a State Depart-
ment spokesman described as 'evasive'
action?"

Another amazing “coincidence"? Well,
after a hundred or so such “coinci-
dences” it begins to look like proof of a
plot. Indeed it has already been publicly
admitted that the ferrets are used not

East German Olympic figure
skating champion Katarina Witt.
Reagan sees red as Soviet-bloc
athletes get the gold.

only for mapping Soviet radar but for
tracking Soviet submarines:

“The role of the ferrets has never been
more important than it became in the
1970s with the obvious expansion of
[Soviet admiral] Gorshkov’s ocean
Navy. Because the Soviets employ
separate codes for each type of SLBM-
equipped submarine, the United States’
ferrets are the ideal and frequently the
only means of identifying the specific
Soviet boats, and type of warhead that
they carry, and the nature of the
operations., upon which they are
engaged, especially in coastal areas
w here N A TO surface ships are denied
access."

— Kennedy, op. cit. [emphasis
added]

Such as the Soviet submarine base at
Murmansk, we presume?

What’s clear is that Reagan’s charges
against the Soviet Union were a Big Lie
designed to cover up an American spy
plot, and that the U.S. under Reagan is
prepared to sacrifice any number of
innocent lives in order to “get" the
Soviet Union. What’s more, the spy
plots and first-strike plans have been
developed by both Republican and
Democratic administrations. The will-
ful blindness of the American news
media in this incident cannot be ex-
plained as simply incompetent journal-
ism, but rather is the result of their
commitment to the ruling class’s anti-
Soviet war drive. As we wrote in the
introduction to our pamphlet. KAL
007: U.S. War Provocation (7 October
1983):

“The Spartacist League press told the
truth about KAL 007 because we are
not blinded by the class ideology of this
country’s rulers — and because we are
not muzzled by fear of confronting ‘the
Russian question.’ Thus our published
views in the heat of the KAL 007 crisis
contrast sharply with those of Ameri-
ca’s other self-styled ‘left’ papers. . , .

"The American government, whether
under Republican or Democratic color-
ation. is driving straight toward nuclear
war against the USSR The motor force
for World War III is the imperialist
drive to reverse the anti-capitalist social
revolutions that have ripped sections of
the world from the orbit of direct

imperialist plunder

"When the terror-bombers of Vietnam
talk about ‘freedom.’ the workers of the
world know that war iscoming It's time
that American working people know
this as well. For the U.S. working class,
acting in its own class interests and on
behalf of all the oppressed, has the
power to wrest from the most danger-
ous imperialist rulingclass in history the
means of mass nuclear death. To do so.
w hat's needed is a revolutionary leader-
ship that tells the truth about what's
going on and what needs to be done." ■

16 MARCH 1984

5

Nationalism and Stalinism— Roadblocks to Salvadoran Revolution

Behind Bloody Tragedy of
Ana Marfa and Cayetano Carpio

Barricada

The funeral of murdered Salvadoran guerrilla leader Ana Marfa In Managua
last April.

On April 6 of last year, the second in
command of the People’s Liberation
Forces “Farabundo Marti" (FPL) of El
Salvador, Melida Anaya Montes, better
known as Comandante Ana Maria, was
brutally murdered in her residence in a
heavily guarded compound in Mana-
gua, Nicaragua. Three days later tens of
thousands paid homage to their com-
rade at a mass demonstration in the
Nicaraguan capital; FPL founder and
leader Salvador Cayetano Carpio (Co-
mandante Marcial) returned from
Libya to deliver the funeral oration. On
April 12, Carpio in turn was found dead
in his study in Managua after reportedly
committing suicide. He was buried the
following day in a private ceremony
attended by his wife and leaders of the
Nicaraguan Sandinista Liberation
Front (FSLN), although the news was
not published for another week. The
loss of two top leaders was a severe blow
to the Salvadoran leftist guerrillas
grouped together in the Farabundo
Marti National Liberation Front
(FMLN).

Who was responsible for the double
tragedy? Over the last year, several
different and contradictory accounts
have been circulated by the Salvadoran
insurgents and the FSLN. An initial
FPL communique (and Sandinista
commander Tomas Borge at a press
conference on April 7) pointed an
accusing finger at the American Central
Intelligence Agency for the murder of
Anaya Montes. The CIA is certainly up
to its neck in the assassination business,
from the slaying of Congolese independ-
ence leader Patrice Lumumba to its
countless attempts to kill Cuba’s Fidel
Castro. And the hideous details of the
death of Ana Maria — she was stabbed
82 times with an ice pick, her throat then
slit with a fishing knife — had the marks
of a rightist death squad job.

But on April 20, the People’s
Liberation Forces and the Nicaraguan
interior ministry named a member of the
FPL’s Central Command, Rogelio
Bazzaglia (“Marcelo"), as the murderer.
According to this second FPL commu-
nique. Carpio took his own life because
of an “emotional crisis’’ caused by the
assassination and the fact that the crime
was carried out by his protege,
Bazzaglia.

This now became the official version:
that it was all the work of a lone
“madman’’ (as one FPL spokesman told
the New York Times). Anyone who

Solidarity Publications

Melida Anaya Montes
(Comandante Ana Maria)

6

suggested that the deaths were related to
a political struggle going on inside the
FMLN was accused of fueling an
imperialist “disinformation" campaign.
Yet in early December the FPL issued a
third statement, this one with the
startling accusation that Carpio himself
was the mastermind and organizer of
the assassination of Ana Maria. Until 8
December 1983, Comandante Marcial
was a “legendary" revolutionary leader,
the “Ho Chi Minh of Central America"
no less; the next day he is proclaimed a
cowardly assassin, ten months after the
crime.

Why the sudden “revelation"? The
occasion was a split from the FPL of a
militant faction, the Revolutionary
Workers Movement “Salvador Cayeta-
no Carpio" (MOR), accused by their
former comrades of holding the “sectar-
ian and anti-unity positions" of their
namesake and "seeking to elevate the
figure of Carpio.” All three versions
have been sworn to by the FPL, FMLN
and FSLN leaders and duly repeated by
their followers around the world The
American Socialist Workers Party
(SWP) took the prize for cynicism:
Intercontinental Press headlined its
article on the deaths in Managua

Barricada

Salvador Cayetano Carpio
(Comandante Marcial)

“FMLN rebels press forward in unity";
their denunciation of Carpio and report
on the split in the FPL is titled “Big
strides toward revolutionary unity."

We have refrained until now from
commenting on the deaths of Melida
Anaya Montes and Salvador Cayetano
Carpio because of the extreme murki-
ness of the affair. Much is still obscure
did Carpio order the death of Ana
Maria; did he commit suicide or was he
killed? We don’t know. Certainly the
bloody Salvadoran dictatorship, re-
sponsible for the annihilation of more
than 50,000 of its own citizens, and its
Yankee godfathers who slaughtered
over one million Indochinese (and now
preach "human rights" in preparation
for a nuclear World War III against the
Soviets)are trying to take full advantage
of the consternation. But it is now
apparent that behind the deaths was a
political fight inside the FPL which
resulted in murder. Nor is this the first
time Salvadoran militants have been
killed by another guerrilla faction. And
the FPL/FM LN/FSLN have carried
out, by their own evidence, at least a
cover-up if not a frame-up as well. In
particular, they are blaming the murder
of Ana Maria on "anti-unity sectari-
ans," using her mutilated body to
discredit any opposition to their treach-
erous policies of a negotiated sellout of
the Salvadoran revolution.

Over the last four years, some 50,000
people have been murdered in cold
blood by the kill-crazed rightists in El
Salvador. And the pathological murder-
ers who rule this “free world democra-
cy” talk openly of a “peace of 100,000
dead." The Salvadoran rulers already
did it once, bloodily mowing down the
heroic Communist-led revolt of agricul-
tural workers and peasants in 1932. The
Gatling gun ruled the country, and in
the insurgent areas of western El
Salvador every single Indian peon was
thrown into the mass graves. As a result
of that decimation and terror, those
areas have remained "pacified" up to the
present day. It is crucial to win the
struggle; it is a matter of life and death
not to lose.

At stake in the Salvadoran civil war is

far more than the fate of this tiny
country or even all Central America.
Reagan has made El Salvador the front
line of his war drive against the Soviet
Union, turning the death squads into
“freedom fighters." The oppressed of
the world have a vital stake in the
victory of the workers, peasants and
youth lighting to liberate their land
from a bloodthirsty oligarchy and
Yankee imperialism. The international
Spartacist tendency has uniquely raised
the slogans. “Military Victory to Sal-
vadoran Leftists!" and “Defense of
Cuba, USSR Begins in El Salvador!"
Our aim is not to place in power the
national Stalinists of the FPL, much less
second-string bourgeois politicians like
Ungo and Zamora, but to open the road
to proletarian rule. By fighting for
workers revolution throughout Central
America and extending the struggle
north to Mexico, the industrial power-
house of the region — and by fighting for
militant labor solidarity action in the
U S. itself— we can smash the Pentagon
pirates and their invasion plans.

Murder and Lies

From the beginning, the FPL, the
FMLN and the Sandinistas have lied
about the Ana Maria/Cayetano Carpio
affair. And their lies keep changing. In
April, the FPL said the assassination of
Ana Maria was the work of Bazzaglia/
“Marcelo" alone, to “settle a grudge and
alleged political differences." In Decem-
ber it is a result of the “ideological and
political decomposition” of Cayetano
Carpio, a process extending over "re-
cent years.”

“His murder of Ana Maria is totally
and absolutely proven.” concludes the
FPL document. Marcial’s "ideological
and political decomposition" allegedly
produced “grave distortions and devia-
tions that eventually resulted in Com-
panera Ana Maria’s assassination." In
other words, since Carpio was political-
ly at odds with Anaya Montes and other
FPL leaders, therefore he must have
ordered her killed That reasoning
speaks volumes about the internal
functioning of this “Marxist-Leninist"
organization.

As for the violent outcome of this
infighting, settling political accounts by
killing off your opponents is standard
practice among petty-bourgeois nation-
alists of both right and left. Recall the
1979 murder of Afghan nationalist
Taraki, the respected leader of the
Afghan left, by a rival member of his
faction. Or the spectacular shoot-out at
the Ethiopian Derg in 1977. when
Colonel Mengistu gunned down eight
fellow members of the military council
which had deposed Emperor Haile
Selassie. The most recent example, on
everyone’s mind, was the assassination
last fall of Maurice Bishop, prime
minister of the tiny Caribbean island of
Grenada, by rivals in his New Jewel
Movement. This crime provided a
pretext for U.S. invasion a week later.
Both the imperialists and reformist-
nationalists have tried to pin that
despicable deed on "hard-line Marxists”
or “ultraleft sectarians," though the
facts are very different. But there is a
political light brewing among the
Salvadoran leftist rebels, and right-wing
elements in the FDR/FMLN are trying
to dismiss any militant as a would-be
murderer in order to push their schemes

WORKERS VANGUARD

of “unity" with a mythical "patriotic"
bourgeoisie.

We certainly don't claim to know the
whole truth about the disputes among
the Salvadoran guerrilla leaders. This is
a dirty and murky business among
Stalinists and petty-bourgeois national-
ists who don’t even pay lip service to
workers democracy (like not murdering
your factional opponents). All their
debates — with the ritual charges and
countercharges of “sectarian" and
“opportunist" — ultimately center on
how and how grossly to sell out. what
layers of the so-called “patriotic” bour-
geoisie to include in the popular front
and what deals to negotiate with Yankee
imperialism. The murderous factional
disputes among the Salvadoran guerril-
la chiefs have nothing in common with
the Leninist program and perspective of
proletarian revolution.

A sclerotic old Stalinist, moreover
with delusions of grandeur. Carpio
apparently did not want to go quite as
far as his main rivals in drawing all
“non-oligarchical” sectors of Salvador-
an society into the popular front. So his
enemies within the FPL and FMLN
now want to paint him as a firebreath-
ing “ultraleftist" in order to justify their
own particular sellout policies. His
adulators, including various pseudo-
Trolskyists. portray him as a latter-day
Che Guevara, a “shining example of a
revolutionary" (French LCR) and “the
best Salvadoran example of the revolu-
tionary man of action" ( Mexican PR T).
But Carpio was no Guevara, much less
an "unconscious Marxist" or “instinc-
tive Trotskyist" such as these inveterate
tailists are forever discovering. Carpio
never claimed to stand for working-class
independence from the capitalists. He
just wanted a more “left" version of the
popular front.

The Mandelites’ Quatrieme Interna-
tionale (I December 19X3) has pub-
lished the text of a lengthy speech by
Carpio delivered just five days before
the murder of Ana Maria. In this
“political testament." the FPL leader
said that "the working class can play the
leadership role in a class alliance
including also sectors of the bourgeoi-
sie." By this typical Stalinist sleight-of-
hand, he tries to obscure the fact that he
is talking of class-collaborationist alli-
ances. (And if. by calling for a bloc with
“democratic" capitalists and "constitu-
tionalist" officers, this popular front
leads to bloody disaster, as in Chile or
Indonesia, well then the working class
didn’t have “leadership” after all!) The
“class alliance" Carpio is referring to. of
course, is the Salvadoran FDR. which
includes marginal bourgeois liberals
(Guillermo Ungo’s "social-democratic"
MNR). dissident Christian Democrats
(Ruben Zamora’s MPSC), small busi-
ness groups and even members of El
Salvador’s landowning elite (Enrique
Alvarez Cordova, first president of the
FDR. was a scion of one of the “14
Families”). But if the language in this
veiled polemic is too oblique, Carpio
spelled it all out in the New York Times
(9 February 1982):

“Our program is lor a democratic,
revolutionary government, not for a
Socialist government I he program for
ihc democratic government is very
broad there is room for everybody's
contribution, from large businessmen
to small farmers and merchants— for
anyone who supports the independent
development of the country, opposes
fascism, and wants democracy We
don't believe i hat this broad program
has anything to do with Socialism or a
Socialist government."

We don’t either.

The People’s Liberation Forces have
often appeared the most left-wing,
sometimes talking of socialism and
uncomlortable with the line of "nego-
tiated settlement." Nevertheless, all the
key rebel proposals for a "political
solution" to end the war bear the
signature of Salvador Cayetano Carpio
as well as the other leaders of the
FMLN.

Ultimately the political differences
between Carpio and the other coman-

dantes were subordinated to their power
plays and maneuvers. And those ma-
neuvers are centered on getting a deal
with a section of the local bourgeoisie.
The various FDR/FMLN leaders are all
prepared to send their peasant guerrillas
against the urban workers should the
latter make problems for their "govern-
ment ol broad representation." Thus the
organizational independence of workers
militias is vital. Instead of murder and
lies in the name of "unity." what’s
needed is one hell of a factional struggle
on clear programmatic lines, tor prole-
tarian revolution.

Sellouts and CIA-Baiting

For the leaders of the rebel fronts, for
the reformist-nationalists in general, the
lesson of the deaths in Managua is: war
on “ultraleft, anti-unity sectarians." The
FPL statement makes a pointed refer-
ence to the murder of Maurice Bishop in
Grenada: “No one is unaware that

their more-or-tess left opponents as
being imperialist agents. One of the
great rooter-outers of "fascisto-
Trotzkyites," Molotov, remarked while
sipping champagne with von Ribbcn-
tropp: "Fascism is a matter of taste.” If
so, then how come Molotov and his
master Stalin butchered tens of thou-
sands of Trotskyists (Bolsheviks) as
"Nazi agents"? Answer: it was conven-
ient. They had to say something,
something other than the truth.

Neither the FPL nor the FMLN
condemn assassination of opponents on
the left (not to mention the use of
gangster methods in general). This is not
accidental. We recall in particular the
execution of Roque Dalton in May 1975
by his "comrades" of Villalobos’ Revo-
lutionary People’s Army(ERP). Dalton
accused the ERP leaders of following a
“militarist" strategy. His opponents
answered by “trying" him on charges of
being a "Cuban-CIA agent." and on 10
May 1975 they "executed" El Salvador’s

Monies/Gamma

Salvadoran guerrillas have Reagan’s butchers on the run. Military victory ot
leftist insurgents would open the road to workers revolution.

recently in Grenada a group ol revolu-
tionaries was used either directly or
indirectly by imperialism to provoke
division and confrontation within the
New Jewel Movement." Here is the
meaning of all the “umty"-mongering:
Bishop’s murder is not mentioned —
their crime is that they "provoked
division"! Thus anyone who objects to
FDR proposals for an army including
much of the present genocidal officer
corps, for the preservation of capitalist
property in the framework of a (bour-
geois) "democratic government of
broad representation" ... is supposedly a
witting or unwitting tool of the CIA.
This “argument” is spelled out even
more explicitly in a 16 December
statement by the FMLN General Com-
mand against the MOR: "It will not take
long for the CIA to dress in sheep’s
clothing and use its money to give a shot
of oxygen to this group — "

All sectors of the Salvadoran left are
for a popular front But in this context
some of the running dogs of the
bourgeoisie arc more rabid than others.
I heir appetites lor class-collaboration
arc almost limitless, aiming to include
wider and wider layers and components
of their supposed rulers. And anyone
who balks at sitting down with such
direct representatives of the CIA is
labeled... a CIA agent It is a familiar
phenomenon. In his time Lenin was
labeled a wholesaler of the Kaiser’s gold
by Kerensky and the Mensheviks; Stalin
claimed Trotsky was an agent of the
Mikado (and of Hitler, and the British
king, etc.); the Spartacists are supposed
to be CIA agents, KGB agents, or both
simultaneously. The closer the sellouts
are to being on speaking terms with the
imperialist monster, the more they revile

greatest poet (FMLN apologists Rob-
ert Armstrong and Janet Shenk refer
to the murder of Roque Dalton in their
book. El Salvador: The Face of Revolu-
tion, as "The Death of Revolutionary
Innocence"! We say this was an abomi-
nable crime whose authors must be
brought to justice by the soviet democ-
racy of a victorious workers revolution.)

Caudillismo and the
Latin American Left

"The phenomenon of caudillismo has
been overcome in the FPl Today any
leader can fall in combat, from the
highest official on down, and our
organization would immediately be
able to replace them."

— Salvador Cayetano Carpio.
Comhate [Spain], 28 April
1983

Comandante Marcial was quickly
replaced, but the vice of caudillismo , the
unrestricted domination by the Great
Leader, was hardly absent from the
People’s Liberation Forces or the
Salvadoran left in general. In the one
part of their December 9 statement
which has the ring of truth rather than
cover-up, the new FPl leaders com-
plain of Carpio:

"He began to consider himself the most
consistent, pure, and flawless revolu-
tionary of our country and of the entire
region, as the sole genuine spokesman
for the Salvadoran proletariat and
people.

"He developed a strong inclination
toward receiving praise and adulation,
toward placing himself and his opinions
above those of the collective leadership
and ol party bodies, to protect and pay
attention solely to those who applauded
him blindly.”

Well, what did they expect? He was.
after all. their lider maximo. And the
practice of settling political disputes by

killing your opponents is. to put it
baldly, as Latin American as empana-
das and machismo. From the dawn of
independence from Spain, one “man on
horseback" after another has shot his
way into the presidential palace. Even in
recent years most l^atin Americans have
been living under the jackboot of
military rulers. Though he’s a wacko, a
character straight out of the movie The
In-Laws , Guatemala’s (now deposed)
Leader-by-the-Grace-of-God-and-His-
Machine-Guns. Rios Montt was no
freak. Only now the traditional caudillo
has been replaced by the army as the
bourgeoisie’s Party of Order, whose
slogan, as Marx said of the second
French Bonaparte, is “Infantry, Caval-
ry, Artillery!"

The prevalence of caudillismo in
Latin America has been seized upon by
imperialist war criminals like America’s
Madame Nhu, Jeane Kirkpatrick, an
admirer of "moderate authoritarians"
like the butcher Somoza in Nicaragua
and El Salvador’s mad tyrant General
Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez who
slaughtered more than 30.000 peasants
and workers in putting down the
Communist-led insurrection of 1932.
Reagan’s first “human rights” adviser
Ernest Lefever excused the bloodbath
unleashed by the Pinochet dictatorship
in Chile as merely a “residual practice of
the Iberian tradition." (In contrast to
the Anglo-Saxon tradition of genocide
against the American Indians?) Such
“democratic" apologists of mass murder
neglect to mention that the most refined
techniques of torture and assassination
have been brought to the Latin Ameri-
can dictatorships by their U.S. advisers,
importing methods from the Nazis (such
as Chile’s concentration camps) or
developed as "counterinsurgency" tech-
niques by the Americans in their dirty
war in Vietnam. Political violence has
been endemic in Latin America for
generations, but it has never come close
to the levels employed by the current
crop of “free world" dictators armed,
financed, trained and often installed by
Washington.

Modern Latin American dictator-
ships are a reflection of a process of
"combined and uneven development,”
as Trotsky described the evolution of
tsarist Russia. The growth of produc-
tion for the world market led to the
appearance of a modern proletariat,
while the peasantry was robbed of its
lands to make way for coffee and
banana plantations. Facing this huge
propertyless, impoverished mass was a
tiny local bourgeoisie, which lived
mostly on crumbs left over by the
imperialist giants, from United Fruit to
ITT. which sucked most of the surplus
value out of the continent. T oo weak to
confront its imperial overlords, living in
dread fear of a revolutionary upheaval
of the exploited masses, this stunted
capitalist class was and is incapable of
achieving the democratic gains of the
bourgeois revolutions. Rather than the
mythical "national bourgeoisie” the
Stalinists invented to justify their
program of "two-stage revolution," they
arc a “branch office bourgeoisie." Even
moderate agrarian reform is enough to
give them apoplexy, and democracy is a
"luxury” they can't afford. They prefer
death squads.

continued on page 8

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16 MARCH 1984

7

Free Salvadoran Unionists!

On January 19 of this year a congress
of the Revolutionary Labor Federation
(FSR) being held in San Salvador was
raided by the National Police on the
pretext of searching for armed guerril-
las. No arms were found, but 65 trade
unionists present were held by the
police. Fourteen of those “captured" in
the raid were held indefinitely without
charge. According to El Diario/La
Prensa (22 January) the arrested labor
leaders were identified as belonging to
the Revolutionary Workers Movement
(MOR), a leftist grouping which split
from the People’s Liberation Forces
(FLP) guerrilla group and the Farabun-
do Marti National Liberation Front
(FMLN) last December.

There has been virtually no publicity
from the El Salvador “solidarity move-
ment" abroad about the 14 unionists,
whose very lives were endangered by the
arrests. We have learned from Amnesty
International that those held include
the FSR leaders Jose Jeremias Pereira,
Dinora Ramirez de Pereira. Herber
Orlando Guevara Alfaro, Oscar Orlan-
do Rosales Arriola, Salvador Arana
Flores, Salvador Chavez and Cesar
Alvaro Escalante. Also held were three
members of the metal workers union
ACOTRAMES: Juan Salvador Ramos
Hernandez, Oscar Armando Benavides
and Magdalena del Carmen Rivas

Valencia. Two others detained were
Antonio Escamilla Acosta, a busdriver,
and Esteban Gonzalez, head of a
housing project workers union.

(As we go to press we have been
informed by an FSR spokesman in Los
Angeles of reports that the 14 have just
been released. However, this rumor has
not been confirmed.)

The present leftist insurgency in El
Salvador grew out of a brutal crack-
down by the government and the rightist
death squads against a wave of workers’
struggles in 1979-80. The National
Federation of Salvadoran Workers
Unions (FENASTRAS) reports that
8,239 trade unionists were killed, ab-
ducted, "disappeared" or wounded
between 1979 and 1981. Not a single
union hall in San Salvador has escaped
being bombed, burnt or vandalized.
Today only the Christian Democratic
trade unions linked to the Cl A’s “labor"
front, the AIFLD, continue to operate'
openly — and even these yellow unions
have had leaders murdered by D’Au-
buisson’s killers.

Meanwhile, a series of government
decrees has frozen wages, forbidden
strikes, dissolved unions, militarized
public services and legalized arbitrary
detention and torture. For the last two
weeks thousands of Salvadoran public
sector workers have been on strike

demanding large wage increases. On
March 6 some 30.000 workers at more
than 20 factories and work sites re-
portedly stopped work for two hours in
support of the striking water workers
union, affiliated to the FSR. An army
unit reportedly surrounded the water
workers on the first day of their strike,
and the head of the National Police
has accused the strikers of trying to
“provoke chaos and repudiate the elec-
tions." The umbrella union grouping
MUSYGES denounced the electoral
farce, saying it “was not a solution to
national problems." The U.S. press has
blacked out this importantdevelopment.

Despite last summer’s highly pub-
licized amnesty, hundreds of unionists
still languish as political prisoners in
the Mariona and Nueva Esperanza jails.
Among the important labor leaders still
imprisoned are Hector Bernabe Reci-
nos, secretary general of FENASTRAS.
and Jose Arnulfo Grande, secretary of
the electrical workers union STECEL.
It was STECEL that touched off the
strike wave in 1979 with a dramatic
plant occupation shutting off power
throughout the country, and which
played a key role in the three general
strikes during 1980. While most of the
left-led unions have been forced under-
ground and many unionists have joined
the guerrillas in the countryside, there is

still an active labor movement in the
capital. This would be the core of any
struggle for workers revolution in El
Salvador.

An international campaign to save
imprisoned Salvadoran unionists is
urgently needed. Unfortunately, the El
Salvador “solidarity" milieu, which
■politically supports the FMLN, is more
interested in pressuring Democratic
Senators to support negotiations than in
freeing these class-war prisoners. Dur-
ing the 1920s the International Red Aid,
a defense organization linked to the
Communist International, mounted a
worldwide campaign for the American
labor radicals Sacco and Vanzetti.
Much support flowed in from Latin
America, including demonstrations in
Havana and Buenos Aires. The person
responsible for the Caribbean Bureau of
the Red Aid working out of New York
was a young Salvadoran, Agustin
Farabundo Marti. Marti, who reported-
ly wore a red star with a picture of
Trotsky on his lapel during the late ’20s.
went on to lead the Salvadoran Com-
munist Party and was executed by the
dictatorship in the 1932 revolt which
the Stalinized Comintern denounced
as “left-sectarian." h is the duty of
American workers to reciprocate the
internationalist solidarity Marti valiant-
ly fought for.

Free all Salvadoran unionists and all
other victims of the rightist repression!
Hot cargo military goods to El Salva-
dor and rightist regimes of Central
America! ■

Mill workers occupy the Tres Rios cotton mill to demand hiqher waaes in
December 1979.

Bloody

Tragedy...

(continued from page 7)

This has reflected itself within the left
in many ways. Politically: if the army is
the main political party of the bourgeoi-
sie, the guerrilla bands or today the
“politico-military organizations" of the
Salvadoran insurgency are the “party-
armies” of the nationalist left. But pick-
up-the-gun militancy does not equal
revolutionary Marxism. Socially: the
phenomenon of caudillismo has always
been bound up with the social values of
machismo, of male dominance. El Jefe,
wrote Mexican novelist Octavio Paz, is
"El Gran Chingon" (The Big Fucker).
The struggle for socialist revolution in
Latin America is not only a program-
matic fight against the nationalist and
reformist programs which seek a com-
promise with sections of the domestic
bourgeoisie. It is also a sharp fight
against the practices of a petty-
bourgeois left whose would-be supreme
leaders share common values with the
reactionary generals they seek to re-
place. As we wrote last year:

“The struggle to forge genuinely
Bolshevist parlies in Latin America is an

arduous task, requiring a clear political
break from nationalism and from the
social values of a nationalist left that
imitates its own rulers, embracing the
values that have led to every mass-
murdering bourgeois caudillo. . . . For
the imitative macho pigs of the petty-
bourgeois nationalist ‘left,’ what goes
for a programmatic split is to say.
‘ Cahron , I screw your wife. And you
steal party funds.' And of course they
blame everything on vanqui CIA
agents, to amnesty their own rulers."

— “Bolivian Labor Shakes
Popular Front," WV No 330.
20 May 1983

The assassination of Melida Anaya
Montes cannot be explained by the
perfidy of a “Marcelo” or even the “cult
of personality" of Marcial. This is the
product of a political milieu in which all
political disputes degenerate into accu-
sations of personal betrayal, cowardice
and theft, a petty-bourgeois cockpit in
which norms of proletarian morality are
utterly absent.

Trotskyism vs. Murderous
Stalinism and Nationalist
Betrayal

Lenin’s Bolsheviks were able to build
an internationalist communist party in
Russia which drew from a century of
profound alienation of the intelligentsia
from the corrupt morals of the tsarist
autocrats and landed aristocrats. It is

remarkable, by way of contrast to Latin
America, that although there were
numerous assassinations of hated tsarist
officials during the nineteenth century,
there is only one case of murder within
the left (by the anarchist Nechaev). But
Russia was itself an imperialist oppres-
sor power, and rejection of Great
Russian chauvinism was therefore a
precondition to any real struggle against
the autocracy. In Latin America, how-
ever. the oppressive weight of Yankee
imperialism makes it hard to see the
main enemy at home. The nationalist
left has clung to the "national" culture,
traditions and values of their oppres-
sors. (In the Salvadoran insurgency,
national narrowness has been so pro-
nounced that when the Central Ameri-
can Workers Party joined the FMLN it
was required to separate itself organiza-
tionally from its Honduran comrades as
the admission price!)

The bloody tragedy of Ana Maria and
Cayetano Carpio was the product of a
petty-bourgeois left marked by the
intersection of nationalism and Stalin-
ism. The "moderate" elements of the
opposition popular front are such
sellouts that evidently some sellouts are
looking to hardline Stalinism as an
alternative. The right-wingers of the left
accuse them of being "ultraleft sectari-
ans." Not at all. From Mao’s China to
the Salvadoran guerrillas, we have
noted that “Stalinism under the gun”
may adopt a posture of militancy
without being substantially to the left of

their rivals. Often these “hards’* merely
have a taste for bonapartism — people
who would rather shoot you than argue
politically. Contrary to the bourgeois
propaganda about “bloodthirsty com-
munists," such methods are the antithe-
sis of everything the Russian Bolsheviks
and the early Communist International
stood for.

Stalin perpetrated widespread gang-
sterism within the left precisely in order
to wipeout the remnants of Leninism at
the same time he was killing off the
I rotskyist Lett Opposition, the “Great
Organizer of Defeats" was seeking a
deal with the imperialists to let him
build "socialism in one country." Leon
I rotsky himself was of course assassi-
nated in Mexican exile by an agent of
Stalin’s GPU (after a failed attempt
organized through the Mexican CP).
Stalin murdered the Red Army officer
corps as "German collaborators" while
he was preparing his pact with Hitler.
And in Vietnam, as the defeated
Japanese withdrew in 1945, the
Stalinists — in league with the French —
massacred the Trotskyist leaders to
stifle mass opposition to the return of
imperialist troops.

It will take a profound fight against
Stalinism and nationalism to forge
authentic Leninist-Trotskyist propa-
ganda groups in Latin America, and
sharp revolutionary struggles interna-
tionally to transform them into mass
communist parties. It was the electrify-
ing impact of the Bolshevik Revolution,

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8

WORKERS VANGUARD

El Salvador...

(continued from page I)

they have 1.700 U.S. troops armed with
“heavier weapons" according to the
New York Times (10 March). And as
NBC described this latest move: "Sever-
al thousand Honduran troops will join
the U.S. infantry units in what is
described as a major effort to show
support for the Salvadoran army and at
the same time threaten the Salvadoran
guerrillas." The U.S. and Honduran
troops will be backed up by U.S. planes
flying missions over guerrilla-held areas
of El Salvador.

Having tried and failed to revive the
Salvadoran dictatorship with changes
of military command and Vietnam-style
“pacification" tactics, the U.S. is now
engaged in military provocation to set
up a Gulf of Tonkin incident in Central
America. Saying that U.S. military
personnel for the “first time... have
provided regular tactical support for
Salvadoran government forces on the
battlefield," a Los Angeles Times (13
March) editorial condemned this policy
of provocation: "Sending U.S. pilots on
observation missions in support of El
Salvador's army is a dangerous escala-
tion of U.S. involvement in that coun-
try’s civil war." In what Newsweek (19
March) described as a “bold new
military buildup.” the Pentagon has
“erected a network of airstrips, supply
depots and training camps all over
Honduras." With Honduras as a mili-
tary base and U.S. troops lining the ill-
defined Salvadoran border, Reagan is
poised for invasion. We say: Yankee
imperialism — Get out of Central Ameri-
ca! For military victory to leftist
insurgents in El Salvador! Nicaragua
Kill the invaders!

The latest U.S. move is as desperate as
it is dangerous. After an uninterrupted
string of defeats for the U.S. -backed
government forces on the battlefield,
Reagan is trying to Americanize the
Salvadoran civil war. The latest guerril-
la offensive in January revealed the
power and coordination of the insurgent

forces and the vulnerability and demor-
alization of the government press-gang
army. Added to the leftist offensive, a
strike wave has hit San Salvador as
thousands of water utility workers
walked out. supported by work stop-
pages and solidarity strikes by workers
in other sectors. As the army crumbles
Reagan is attempting to divert attention
with his standard tactic: call a phony
election. But this time the “election"
seems to be a booby trap for the
imperialists.

Two years ago, Washington’s "psy
war" specialists managed to pull off a
propaganda coup with photos of long
lines of voters and padded vote totals.
But this time things don’t look so hot for
the “free world" dictatorship If Chris-
tian Democratic candidate Napoleon
Duarte is “elected.” the military is likely
to stage a coup. Duarte — who was junta
president from 1980 to 1982 and is
routinely and accurately referred to as
"butcher Duarte" around the world — is
widely seen by the Salvadoran ruling
class as a “sellout to Communism.” If
the victory goes to Roberto D’Aubuis-
son, who runs the notorious death
squads and ordered the murder of
Archbishop Romero, it exposes the
Americans' phony “electoral process" as
a cover for mass murder. Especially
since the “tropical fascist" known to
U.S. military advisers as “Blowtorch
Bob” vows to unleash a bloodbath that
would make Pinochet look like a
Quaker.

For the U.S., these death squad
“elections" are failing even as a propa-
ganda diversion. Instead they have
become the excuse for increased
"emergency" military aid. Warning that
the “Salvadoran armed services will run
out of key materiel in the next few
months," Secretary of State George
Shultz announced late last month that
the administration was sending some
$80 million to El Salvador without
Congressional approval. Later he ac-
cused Congress of “walking away” from
Central America — preparations for the
debate on “who lost El Salvador?” And
with his butchers on the run in El
Salvador, Reagan seems to be losing the

battle for the “hearts and minds” at
home. The growing defeatism in the
U.S. is reflected even in Congress which
balked at tripling military aid this year
for these losers.

In any case, Reagan is going ahead
with tens of millions in military equip-
ment to turn Honduras into a giant
weapons platform for U.S. aggression.
In a country the size of Tennessee, the
Army engineers and Navy Seabees have
built or improved five airstrips, con-
structed three radar installations and a
training base for Salvadoran and
Honduran soldiers near Puerto Castilla.
And more is on the way. Even the
government's General Accounting Of-
fice noted that the U.S was “engaged in
a continuing, if not permanent, military
presence in Honduras."

Under the guise of the joint U.S.-
Honduran military maneuvers Big Pine
I and 11, the Pentagon has laid the
infrastructure for a full-scale invasion.
Now it has announced another “exer-
cise" for the summer called “Operation
Grenadier." no doubt to remind the
guerrillas about the U.S. invasion of
Grenada. With its puppets in trouble,
the U.S. is waving the Big Stick,
threatening the Grenada treatment if the
guerrillas so much as say “boo" during
the election. In the wake of the U.S.
invasion of Grenada last fall, the
Baltimore Sun (26 October 1983)
headlined its analysis: “Lesson to left
there for learning: Soviets. Cubans.
Sandinistas might take heed.” The
lesson Reagan wanted to drive home
was that if you go “too far” you’ll get hit
with the Yankee Big Stick. And the
Sandinistas and Salvadoran insurgent
leaders have evidently taken Reagan’s
lesson to heart: withdrawal of Cuban
teachers from Nicaragua, removal of
FDR/FMLN offices from Managua,
guarantees to cut off all aid to leftist
guerrillas, offers to join a government
with anyone but D’Aubuisson...and
anathemas and threats against any
“anti-unity" “ultraleftists" who resist the
suicidal perspective of abject appease-
ment. But El Salvador is not tiny
Grenada. Here the guerrillas are fight-
ing a bloody civil war and winning!

Yet treacherously, the opposition
Revolutionary Democratic Front
(FDR) has responded with a promise of
an electoral truce. FDR head Guillermo
Ungo even denounced the dissident left-
wing MOR (Revolutionary Workers
Movement) for refusing to go along
with this betrayal ("We cannot assume
responsibility for what they do.")
Spelling out their “political solution"
sellout, the FDR popular frontists have
advanced a craven call for a “provision-
al government of broad participation"
(FDR statement. 31 January). How
broad? They would exclude only D’Au-
buisson's far right ARENA party. That
means they would form an alliance not
only with butcher Duarte but also the
PCN, the official government apparatus
which ruled for decades with its own
death squad terror and brutality.

The made-in-USA election provo-
cation means more mass murder for
the Salvadoran masses. Only a rebel
victory on the battlefield can sweep
away the pathological killers and their
landlord-capitalist bosses, opening the
road to workers revolution throughout
the region. That- is what the White
House fears above all.

A defeat of U.S. imperialism and its
local butchers in Central America
would be a powerful blow against
Reagan's global war drive aimed at the
Soviet Union. We hail the heroic
Salvadoran guerrilla fighters and the
workers and peasants of Nicaragua
battling the CIA-organized contra
terrorists. It is the urgent duty of all
class-conscious American workers to
mobilize to prevent Yankee imperialism
from unleashing the full horror of its
war machine against the toiling masses
of Central America. Boycott military
cargo bound for El Salvador, Honduras
and other rightist regimes of the region!
For labor strikes against U.S. interven-
tion in Central America! Such a
mobilization of the American working
class against Washington’s ravaging of
Central America can be the beginning of
the end for American imperialism — the
monstrous enemy of all the peoples of
the world — through revolution from
within. ■

Communist
Agustln
Farabundo
Marti (right),
leader of the
1932 Salvadoran
uprising, with
Nicaraguan
nationalist
guerrilla leader
Augusto Cesar
Sandino.

in fact, which brought Marxist social-
ism to Latin American shores. And in
the early years, the founders of the Com-
munist parties of South and Central
America fought for the same program as
the Trotskyists today: not the Stalinist-
Menshcvik formulas of "democratic
revolution" (anti-feudal, anti-imperial-
ist, etc.), but mobilizing the oppressed
masses behind the working class to
establish a dictatorship of the proletari-
at and extend the revolution interna-
tionally. This is the program of perma-
nent revolution . the program of October
1917 Thusacall to the working class of
the Americas by the Communist Inter-
national (January 1921) proclaimed:

"Only with the participation of the
Communist party will clarity and
revolutionary honesty he introduced
into the movement in South
America

“The revolution of the proletariat and
the poor peasantry, in any country of
South America, will immediately pro-
voke armed intervention by the United
States which, in turn, will make neces-

sary the revolutionary intervention ol
the proletariat of the United States
'"Revolution at home, combined with
proletarian revolution in the United
States,’ that is the slogan of the
revolutionary proletariat and the poor
peasantry of South America."

— reprinted in Michael Lowy.
tJ marxismo en America
Ixmna ( 1980)

Compare this internationalist call with
the nationalist program of the FDR/
FMLN today, who look to a non-
existent "democratic" bourgeoisie at
home and to the Democratic imperialist
“doves" rather than the working class in
the U.S.

Most striking of all is the sharp
contrast between today’s nationalist-
reformist supporters of the Farabundo
Marti National Liberation Front and
Agustin Farabundo Marti himself.
Miguel Marmol, the sole survivor of the
Salvadoran Communist Party leader-
ship from the 1932 uprising which was
crushed in the infamous Matanza
(massacre) reports: “Marti broke with

[Nicaraguan nationalist general] Sandi-
no for ideological reasons. Although he
considered Sandino a great anti-
imperialist patriot, he broke with the
narrow nationalist conceptions of this
great popular caudillo who did not
share the revolutionary Marxist-
Leninist vision of the class struggle and
proletarian internationalism which
Marti already had solidly implanted in
his head and heart" (Roque Dalton.
Miguel Marmol: Los sucesos de

1932 en El Salvador [1972]). And the
Manifesto which called for the Janu-
ary 1932 Communist-led insurrection
announced:

"The general insurrection of the work-
ing men and women to establish a
government ol workers, peasants and
soldiers.

“Comrade workers: arm yourselves and
defend the Proletarian Revolution!
Comrade railway workers: take the
railways and place them at the service of
the revolution!

“Comrade peasants: seize the lands of
the great haciendas and farms and
protect him who today has a piece of
land and defend your revolutionary
conquests with arms, without pity for
the rich!

“Comrade soldiers don’t shoot a single
shot against the revolutionary peasants
and workers! Kill your commanders
and officers! Place yourselves at the
orders of the comrade soldiers who have
been named Red Commanders by this
Central Committee!

“Comrades form councils of workers,
peasants and soldiers!

"All power (u the workers, peasants and
soldiers councils!"

— quoted in Lowy, El marxismo
en America Latina

This is the tradition to which the
international Spartacist tendency looks:
not the petty-bourgeois reformist na-
tionalism and Stalinism of Villalobos
and Carpio. but the proletarian interna-
tionalism of Lenin. Trotsky. . and
Farabundo Marti *

WORKERS VANGUARD

Marxist Working-Class Biweekly of the Spartacist League

□ $5/24 issues ol Workers Vanguard
(includes JZpartaciSt) International rates

□ New □ Renewal S20/24 issues- Airmail
S5/24 issues— Seamail

□ $2/9 issues of Young Spartacus

□ $2/4 issues of
Women and Revolution

□ $2/10 introductory issues of
Workers Vanguard
(includes Spartacist)

Name

Address

City

Phone
State _

Zip.

350

Make checks payable/mall to: Sparlaclst Publishing Co.. 80* 1377 GPO. New Yortt. NY 10116

16 MARCH 1984

9

Transit Workers the Real Target

Defend Foremen Against
NYC Subway Bosses!

When ex-CIA spymastcr Robert
Kiley took over the post of New York
City' transit czar last fall, we warned:
"New York City transit workers,
beware — you arc Kiley’s next target"
( WV No. 340. 21 October 1983). Kiley
wasn’t long in showing his hand. On
February 14. Kiley delivered an anti-
union tirade (aptly dubbed the “St.
Valentine’s Day Massacre speech" by
the Amsterdam News). Kiley demanded
the elimination of all civil service and
union membership for supervisory and
management personnel of the Transit
Authority (TA). Kiley made no bones
about his real target — the 36.000 transit
workers organized by the Transport
Workers Union (TWU). "What we’ve
had at the T ransit Authority is a strong
union, looking out for the interests of its

members, always pushing, but with
nobody pushing back on the other side
on a day-by-dav basis. We must and we
shall restore balance to the labor-
management equation" (Chief- Leader.
24 February). So Kiley wants to fire
foremen who won’t crack the whip at the
TWU and hire anti-union, racist punks
from the outside for his union-busting
speedup drive.

Kiley’s crackdown has already gone
into gear with a series of "inspection"
tours of transit workplaces. Foremen
and supervisors caught for not enforc-
ing ’’productivity" have been written up
and disciplined. A particular target is
the maintenance and repair shops,
where union work rules and job condi-
tions remain relatively intact. Kiley
wants to turn them into sweatshops run

like the subway transportation unit,
where safety and union rules have been
shot to hell, and where in the past month
alone two transit workers were killed.
And the labor-hating bosses, who want
to get rid of the union altogether, won’t
stop there either. I hese union-busters
must be stopped in their tracks, now!
And central to that is the mobilization
of the TWU itself, which has the power
to bring the bosses to their knees.

Militants grouped around the class-
struggle Committee fora Fighting TWU
call for mobilizing the TWU to smash
Kiley’s union-busting speedup assault
As the Committee leaflet printed below
stresses, what is vitally important are
authoritative, elected shop stewards to
mobilize the workers against the bosses'
intended victimizations. This involves a

sharp break with the Lawe bureaucra-
cy’s policies of subordinating the union
to the state.

When Kiley was appointed, John
Lawe said of this consummate labor
hater: “From everything I hear about
him I think he’s good material” (Chief-
Leader. 14 October 1983). A Committee
spokesman told WV that the TWU
Local 100 executive board at its March
12 meeting voted down the Committee
motion for "solidarity and support to
the Subway Supervisors Associa-
tion— *’ This deadly betrayal must be
overturned by the TWU ranks!

For years now NYC’s labor leaders
have crawled on their knees before the
banks and Democratic Party city
bosses. They mortgaged the unions'
pension funds to Big MAC. accepted
layoffs and wage freezes, kowtowed to
government legislation banning strikes,
and meekly accepted massive penalties
when they did strike. The end result has
been simply and predictably to embold-
en the bosses, from racist mayor Koch’s
vicious strikebreaking against the TWU
in 1980 to Kiley’s union-busting today.
The fight now being organized by the
militants of the Committee for a
Fighting I WU. the only grouping in the
TWU with a hard opposition to the
union bureaucracy’s sellout subordina-
tion to the state and suicidal alliance
with the Democratic Party, is critical to
the future of the union.

Committee for a Fighting TWU Leaflet:

Stop Kiley’s Union-Busting!

The city bosses, the banks and their
agents think they should get something
for nothing. They won’t invest the
billions to turn the subways into a safe
and efficient operation, pay us a decent
wage or hire the thousands more
workers needed. Instead they want to
patch up the decaying system that
they've let go to hell with our blood and
guts. Koch and Kiley are on a union-
busting rampage. Kiley’s attack on the
supervisors association is the first step in
an all out drive to get the TWU. The
T.A. is singling out and disciplining
foremen who have stuck their necks out
for us. Kiley wants to fire the foremen
and dispatchers who whip us only now
and then and replace them with outsid-
ers and those who will whip us every
day. The T.A. tops want the power to
fire supervisors and foremen on the spot
in order to break what union conditions
we have, and implement a massive
speedup drive that will murder even
more of us.

The TWU must adopt and implement
the following motion in all sections: The
TWU must express solidarity and

France...

(continued from page 2)
labor onto the garbage heap. The miners
must not allow themselves to get boxed
into "protest" strikes. Elect strike
committees, recallable at all times,
where the union bureaucrats’ treacher-
ous strategies can be scotched. Such
strike committees will also be organiz-
ing centers for mass pickets and Hying
squads to close the pits in all the mining
regions and form the embryo of workers
militias protecting the industrial loca-
tions from scabs and strikebreaking
cops. These strike committees must also
set themselves the task of extending
their struggle, not only to all the mines
but to all other sectors hit full-force by
the industrial “restructuring." The
miners are an integral part of the great
traditions of struggle in steel, the naval
shipyards, auto. Moreover, these sec-
tors that today are under the repeated
blows of capitalism and its reformist
managers have close economic and in
large part geographic ties. The miners
can also play a specially important role
because in their industry, with its large
minority of North African workers,
racial and national tensions are alleviat-
ed by traditions of struggle, by the very
nature ol the work. Defensive strikes in
one or another of these various industri-

support to the Subway Supervisors
Association in its struggle against the
abuse and victimization of members by
higher management!

The union leaders’ program for
“fighting” the union-busting attacks is
to appeal to Cuomo and the liberal
Democratic politicians. It was Cuomo
himself who appointed “Killer” Kiley!
The courts and politicians Lawe grovels
to are the very ones that have set the
Taylor Law on us and enforced the
rotten contract through binding arbitra-
tion. The liberal Democrats ran the trial
of the killers of Willie Turks and let the
lynchers off with a slap on the wrist.
Lawe’s latest proposal for a seat on the
T.A. board would make our union into
an enforcer of Kiley’s union-busting
speedup drive. And instead of handing
the few crumbs we have to the enemy
through the COPE fund, we should be
laying the groundwork for battle. We
need to use our real power — we need

al sectors can well bring others into the
struggle to divide the work available
among all who seek it. Not one layoff!

The shameful betrayal of the heroic
Talbot strike by the bourgeoisie’s
lackeys in the workers movement once
again confirms that the key to victory
for workers’ struggles is the building of a
vanguard party firmly resolved to fight
to the bitter end against rotting capital-
ism. Mitterrand’s blatant economic
incompetence can’t hide the reality: the
imperatives of capitalist crisis, in this
country as in the rest of the capitalist
countries, throw millions of workers
into the street, plunging them into
misery and leading the petty bourgeoisie
to ruin And the fact that the phony
"workers leaders" accept responsibility
for this capitalist crisis can only propel
the desperate petty-bourgeois elements
into the arms of a “savior" on the order
of a P6tain or dc Gaulle, or worse yet Le
Pen. The French economy certainly
needs "restructuring," but on the basis
of a socialist economy and in the
framework of a socialist United States
of Europe. And only if the working class
Tights resolutely on such a far-reaching
program for the expropriation of the
bankrupt bourgeoisie and the rational
reorganization of society can it split off
and win over whole sectors of the petty
bourgeoisie to its struggle ■

mass labor action to stop the union-
busting!

By this we don't mean the token
“solidarity" that Lawe gave to the
Greyhound workers. Big flashy media
stunts in front of TV cameras didn’t stop
Greyhound from rolling its buses over
the bodies of picketers. Real solidarity
means concrete industrial action For
example, in less than thirty days Long
Island Railroad unions say they’ll honor
picket lines of the supervisor association
which is protesting Kiley’s refusal to
bargain with them. If our LIRR union
brothers and sisters walk out, any and
all MTA bus and subway routes that can
be used to break the LIRR strike must
be SHUT DOWN! The way toget rid of

the Taylor Law is by making its
existence irrelevant through effective
acts ol labor militancy that will bind city
labor into a single powerful fist of
working class force.

Preparing our union to fight means
taking measures today that will effec-
tively end our dependence on Kiley. the
city bosses and the forces that are out to
break us. The dues checkoff makes our
union leaders lazy and dependent on
Kiley. Making the bosses our bankers
means entrusting the dues structure to
our enemy and insuring we won’t have it
when we need it most. We must
immediately institute a system of elected
shop stewards responsible for dues
collection!

— Kartsen, Brewer. Smith and the
Committee for a Fighting TWU

12 March 1984

UCLA...

(continued from page 12)

who’s next? ‘Blowtorch Bob’ D’Aubuis-
son° Will Huey helicopters swoop dow n
and 'disappear' students to make Bruin
Walk ‘sale for democracy*? Rivas-
Gallont was decorated by the notorious
South African apartheid regime! What
the hell arc they trying to teach us here?
How to blow away nuns’ Drow n babies
in rivers? While pushing their u.u
criminals here and at universities
around the country, administration
'academic freedom’ hypocrites want to
label students who protest imperialism
'non-people* and deny them their
democratic rights At UCL A the admin-
istration brands them as 'Nazis ' Fell
that to students from El Salvador’s
National University, closed down by the
junta’s jackboot Reagan wants a
victory in Central America to gear up
his drive to roll back social revolutions
from Cuba to the USSR We want to

defeat the imperialist war drive for
nuclear Armageddon against the Soviet
Union. Now’s the time to stand with the
Central American masses fighting to
break their chains of oppression'"

Now the administration is sending
out letters threatening individual stu-
dents lor their protest against Colonel
Waghelstein in January, including
CISPES members. The administration
has made it clear that it stands by its
butchers and any student who protests
against imperialism is on their hit list!
Against the outrageous jailings the SYI
held a rally on Tuesday March 6 which
drew an enthusiastic crowd, and bull-
horning continued throughout the day
A speakout tor Wednesday March 14 is
being organized to demand “War
Criminals Olf Campus! Drop the
Charges Against the SYL Four! Hands
Oil All Anti-Imperialist Protesters!" ■

Spartacist League/ Spartacus Youth League Forums

Reagan’s Lebanon Mess

• Israel Out of Lebanon and the Occupied Territories!

• For a Blnatlonal Palestinian Workers State as Part of a Socialist Federation
of the Near Eastl

• Defend the Soviet Unlonl U S. Out ol the Near Eastl

• Yankee Imperialists— Hands Off the Worldl

Speaker: Ed Clarkson. SL Central Committee
Friday, March 23, 12:00 noon Saturday, March 24, 7:00 p m

Wayne State University Northwest Activities Center

SCB, Hi Iberry A 18100 Meyers. Room 290

DETROIT

10

WORKERS VANGUARD

Phone Workers:

Defend Kathy Ikegami -Win Strikes!

SAN FRANCISCO, 9 March— In a
strong show of support for Militant
Action Caucus (MAC) leader Kathy
Ikegami, over 100 members of Commu-
nications Workers of America (CWA)
Local 9410 unanimously voted tonight
against the purge of Ikegami from her
union. The Local 9410 bureaucracy,
knowing in advance that they had no
support for the witchhunt from the
assembled workers, resorted to the
tactic of declaring the meeting “ad-
journed" before it began. Ikegami, a
well-known militant socialist and sup-
porter of the Spartacist League, had
been framed up and convicted by ex-
president Jim Imerzel’s hand-picked
kangaroo court, suspended from the
union for six months and fined $300.

In response to Ikegami’s conviction.

over 500 CWA members signed peti-
tions demanding tonight’s special mem-
bership meeting. Despite the fact that
the local bureaucrats scheduled the
meeting for a Friday night in an attempt
to cut attendance, over 125 angry
members showed up. Faced with the
large turnout for Kathy, the local
officers fell back on a quorum rule that
is invoked only when the pro-company
bureaucrats are really pressed to frus-
trate the will of the membership.
Ikegami told WVihal the rule requiring
nearly 200 members to be present for
“official business" to be conducted is
regularly ignored; this was in fact the
largest local turnout since last summer’s
contract meeting. In the last ten years,
quorums have been present only at
the once-every-three-years strike vote

meetings.

With many workers still lined up at
the door, recently appointed local
president Marie Malliet declared that
there was no quorum and adjourned the
meeting. One bureaucrat reportedly
tried to ^tart a brawl by attacking a
MAC member and shutting off the
lights and sound equipment, and the
bureaucrats’ clique staged a walkout
with a handful of their supporters. But
the assembled workers quickly restored
order, elected a temporary chair and
secretary, and heard Kathy’s appeal.
The workers voted a special invitation
to the witchhunter Imerzel to return and
present his case, which the coward
declined to do. After an open discussion
a vote was called and the workers
unanimously roared their approval of

a motion reversing the trumped-up
charges: “We sustain the appeal of Sister
Kathy Ikegami and find her not guilty of
all the charges brought by former
President James L. Imerzel, Jr., and
reverse all the decisions and penalties
imposed on her by the Local 9410 Trial
Court and Executive Board."

While the most militant section of the
union came out to support Ikegami, it
was not enough to definitively defeat the
bureaucrats who use their posts and
rules to police union members on the
employer’s behalf. A MAC spokesman
told WV that militants would continue
the fight to mobilize the membership to
reaffirm and enforce this vote.

We reprint below the March 5 appeal
of Kathy and MAC addressed to the
Local 9410 members:

MiHtant Action Caucus Leaflet

Throw Out the Witch-Hunt Verdict!
Vote No on Ikegami’s Conviction!

Brothers and Sisters:

Come to the special membership
meeting Friday March 9th at 6 p.m. to
throw out my frame-up conviction by
ex-President Jim Imerzel’s kangaroo
court. Your presence at this meeting is
crucial.

So they're trying to get me for what 1
stand for. Sure. I’m an obscure and
esoteric red — I’ve never hidden that or
hidden my views. 1 believe in the power
of labor, I don’t trust the leadership of
the Soviet Union, and I am irreconcila-
bly opposed to the U.S. ruling class. I
think the labor movement must defend
black people and other minorities

against Ku Klux Klan and Nazi racist
terror. If they get me then who and what
is going to be next? They want to go
back to the "good old days" of the
McCarthy period in the 1950's where the
only acceptable union members are
“wholesome" white people, like Anita
Bryant and Dan White, or Klan lovers
like Joe McKenna.

How about the rest of you union
members, are you safe? Look at your
skin color or your sexual practices.
When you get drunk do you mutter
about the government? If they get me, a
lot of you will be in line for the same
treatment. Who will he next? This

frame-up conviction of me must not be
allowed to stand!

Why did they decide to go after me?
Two years ago the Militant Action
Caucus blew the whistle on the CWA
officials’ cover-up of Ma Bell’s job cuts.
We called for a fight while we still had
jobs! I was “charged" for telling the
truth to union members in a MAC
leaflet titled “Secret Company/Union
Meeting: Massive Layoffs Slated 1/83."
The leaflet warned of company plans to
cut the work force by 6-10%. Since then
PT&T has cut over 15% of the work
force ( 18,000 jobs) and nationally, the
Bell System has cut over 50,000 jobs.
Everything MAC said two years ago.
and more, has come true. I was also
"charged" because as an Executive
Board member I refused to rubberstamp
Imerzel’s hand-picked steward appoint-
ments. I happen to believe that our

members should have the right to elect
the stewards to represent them.

To wage a real fight against the
vicious and powerful phone company, a
class struggle leadership must be forged
to replace these sellouts and two-bit
McCarthys. It’s time to get on with what
should be the real business of this
union — defending our members against
the company, chucking out the scabs
who crossed our picket lines last August
and defending our strike militants like
Lauren Mozee and Ray Palmiero,
victims of those despicable scabs.

We say it’s better to fight on our feet
than die on our knees! Every decent
unionist has a stake in squashing this
verdict. Be there March 9th and VOTE
NO ON THE CONVICTION!

Kathy Ikegami
March 5, 1984

■West Coast Press Covers'
Lauren and Ray

Demonstration held to support phone workers
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Lauren and
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(continued from page 12)
of the Bay Area labor movement to
make the struggle to defend Mozee and
Palmiero their own. Notable among the
many unionists present were members
of the Communications Workers of
America (CWA). who made up a fifth of
the marchers. One CWA member told
WV that her entire work crew requested
time off work to attend the demonstra-
tion and hearing, and the company was
forced to let most of the crew attend.

Lauren and Ray were made targets of
this racist anti-labor frame-up because
of their membership in the Militant
Action Caucus (MAC), a class-struggle
opposition in the CWA, because Lauren
was a ten-year member of the Black
Panther Party and because she and Ray
are an interracial couple. As a member
of the Bay Area Labor Black League for
Social Defense and coworker of Lau-
ren Mozee put it: “Before you had the
KKK that just came in and beat your
brains out and got away with it — not
that they’re not still doing it. But now
they have the courts behind them.’’

Determined to spike this frame-up the
Phone Strikers Defense Committee
(PSDC) has been filling the courtroom
during each of the many court appear-
ances of the railroaded militants. The
PSDC has initiated militant protests
and conducted a widespread campaign
of protest and exposure. Defense ol
Mozee and Palmiero is critical for
labor! Strikes arc won on the picket line
and Ma Bell’s frame-up takes dead aim
on the main weapon of the unions
against the bosses.

The marchers cheered as it was
announced that the Alameda Central

Labor Council, representing 50,000
AFL-CIO members, has demanded the
dropping of charges against Lauren and
Ray, as well as charges against three
other phone strikers arrested during the
course of the strike on misdemeanor
charges. The defense effort has gathered
wide support among labor and civil